Marie NDiaye (born in 1967) is a French writer of Senegalese origin, renowned in particular since the publication of Rosie Carpe, which won her the Prix Femina in 2001, and Trois femmes puissantes, which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2009. Since then, she has pursued a prolific career, writing numerous novels, short stories and plays. She is considered as one of the best female author of French contemporary literature.

In Trois femmes puissantes, Marie NDiaye focuses on the destinies of three women who manage to assert themselves and say "no" –an odd autobiographical projection of the author. Norah lives in France and refuses to believe that she ever lived in Africa. She's a lawyer, socially successful and suffers from an immature partner. Fanta has left Africa, marrying a Frenchman who is dragging her down. She exists only in her husband's inner monologue. Khadi, with no family of her own, wants to make her way to Europe, and experiences the trials and tribulations of an unwanted migrant.

Marie NDiaye's writing is precise, chiseled, sinuous and willingly bends to the meanderings of stream of consciousness. The reader is caught up in a maelstrom of death, life and murder impulses, passions, indifference, pain and joy, all rushing, colliding and merging, because no emotion is stable since one feeling hides another, and they all carry their opposite –just as a piece of cloth contains its reverse. Trois femmes puissantes is a powerful novel about human dignity, in which good and evil cancel each other out, leaving the reader stunned –and enriched.