Astragal albertine sarrazin biography

A roman à clef about an eighteen-year-old girl's survival on the run from the law, as she is shifted from house to house in hiding.
Albertine Sarrazin (17 September 1937 — 10 July 1967) was a French author.
Albertine Sarrazin (17 September 1937 – 10 July 1967) was a French author.

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Astragal By Albertine Sarrazin

In April 1957, Albertine Sarrazin jumped from the wall of a prison in Doullens, a commune in the Somme region of France, and broke her ankle bone from the thirty-feet drop. The escape formed the basis of Astragal, a roman à clef about an eighteen-year-old girl’s survival on the run from the law, as she is shifted from house to house in hiding, and her physical agency is literally impaired by the fact she can’t walk.

Anne shifts through the book as if in a lucid dream: the physical pain of her ankle blazes through the prose, which conveys the scenes with the quickness of someone intent on survival. At the heart of Astragal is a love story: Julien, an ex-convict, rescues Anne after her fall and captures her heart, a mutual dependency and longing that becomes “a kind of jail term of its own”, writes Patti Smith in the introduction of the 2013 reissue of the novel.

Julien ignites Anne with love, but without domesticating her: and the novel concludes as she slips away with police, caught at last, but escaping the hell of staying in one plac

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Immobilized and in Love with Albertine Sarrazin, Patron Saint of Delinquent Writers

To me, Albertine Sarrazin appeared as the patron saint of delinquent writers, of winged eyeliner, of broken bones, of thieves. I was a 23-year-old with a penchant for petty theft and fare evasion, minor crimes that made me feel lawless and alive. I found her semi-autobiographical novel, Astragal, while stocking the shelves of a bookstore and read it in a single day. It starts with a jailbreak modeled after Sarrazin’s own: The narrator, Anne, jumps the prison wall and drops 30 feet to freedom. She breaks her ankle.

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Albertine Sarrazin had a crooked smirk and dark hair framing her impish face. She was born in 1937 and died in 1967 at the unripe age of 29, due to complications during a kidney surgery. She was unrestrained by the fetters of society, loving intensely, living outside the law, writing fervently and unashamedly. When I look at photos of Sarrazin, I want to hold her head in my hands and kiss her, then run away with her. I want to be her.

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Albertine Sarrazin

Albertine Sarrazin (17 September 1937 – 10 July 1967) was a French author. She was best known for her semi-autobiographical novel L'Astragale.

Life and career

Albertine was born on 17 September 1937 in Algiers, French North Africa. Her teenaged Spanish mother abandoned her and left her with the Welfare Office, where officials named her Albertine Damien in honour of the saint of the day she was found on. At the age of 2 she was adopted by a French army physician and his wife who renamed her Anne-Marie. Following the family's move to Aix-en-Provence in 1947, she was raped by a male relative.^[1] Constant quarrels with her adoptive family led to an intense distaste for authority that stayed with her the rest of her life.

Although she was intelligent and did well in her studies, Albertine's family set to annul her adoption and in 1952 placed her in a reformatory school in Marseille, the Refuge of the Good Shepherd. She passed an examination to graduate from secondary school at the age of 16 before escaping the school and travelli