Balul nebunelor

Women at the Salpêtrière hospital attend a masked ball each year. The setting is Paris in the late nineteenth century. Rich guests join them for polkas and waltzes during Mi-Carême. Dr Charcot uses the ball as a test. He hopes to make his patients like other women. Staff place the dancers in two rooms based on their diagnoses.

Victoria Mas follows Eugénie, Louise and Geneviève through this world. Her novel looks at women’s lives under male rule in the past. It deals with being locked up, shut out, and treated with cruelty. Sex is a theme too. One woman speaks with the dead. This reflects the taste for spiritism, or contact with spirits, at the time. Guests flirt with patients and roam through the asylum. Their acts raise doubts about how rich people use power. Mas writes with restraint to give a voice to silenced women.

The novel won two prizes in 2019. These were the Renaudot des lycéens and Stanisias prizes. Le Point and Lire chose it among their books of 2019. Plans for a film name Mélanie Laurent to write and direct it. Légende Films will produce it.

Mas was born in 1987. Her mother is the singer Jeanne Mas. She worked in film as a secretary and took photos on set. She spent eight years in the United States. There, she studied film and Anglo-American literature. She then went back to France. She earned a master’s degree in literature at the Sorbonne. In 2014, she also published a guide for American visitors. It covers French food and culture.