This classic of queer literature – as electrifying today as it was when it first appeared in 1982 – tells the story of a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her choosing
When Noenka’s abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, she flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America’s tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society’s expectations.
Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer’s classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed, resonant fragments. Who is Noenka? Roemer asks us. ‘I’m Noenka,’ she responds resolutely, ‘which means Never Again.’
About the Author
Astrid Roemer is a Surinamese-Dutch writer and teacherAbout the Translator
Lucy Scott is a translator of Dutch and French literature into EnglishA testament to the resilience of queer lives everywhere. A story of love, survival and freedom, woven with an artistically accomplished touch
— The 2025 judges on On a Woman's Madness
A modern classic set in Suriname and lyrically rendered into English for the first time, On a Woman’s Madness is a testament to both the resilience of queer lives that exist everywhere and everytime and the alchemy of literary translation where a perfect book meets its perfect translator. Through its heightened understanding of character and history filtered through a lush and enriched language, Astrid Roemer draws from suffering, heat, and imprisonment to create a story of love, survival, and freedom that translator Lucy Scott expertly reweaves into English with an empathetic, artistically accomplished touch.
Publishers Weekly
‘Roemer makes her English-language debut with this classic of queer Black literature… As Roemer pushes at the boundaries of the senses, she melds biting postcolonial social commentary with a lush dreamscape. Scott’s translation is a gift to English-language readers.’
Good Book Club
‘Roemer unflinchingly explores the complexity of a woman’s struggle for freedom against a backdrop of 20th-century Suriname, a place where history, identity, and personal autonomy collide. The writing is raw and tender in equal measure, illuminating both the beauty and the pain of choosing a life on one’s own terms.’
Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Southwest Review
‘A stunning tale of love and survival anchored by Noenka’s unflagging honesty and Roemer’s embrace of the contradictions, ambiguity, and mystery that characterize real life…The miracle of Roemer’s novel is not only the beauty with which she narrates Noenka’s life but also the strength of spirit displayed by her characters. Finding beauty and love within any imprisonment is a glimpse of the divine in a person. Roemer’s novel glimmers with this holy light even in the darkest night.’
Harvard Review
‘Difficult, fragmentary, gorgeous, and at times unpredictable…The novel is saturated with pain, drama, pleasure, and violence, which may rightly invite comparison to classics by Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, although Roemer’s writing style is remarkable in its own right.’
Lily Meyer, NPR
‘In prose full of sensory description…and evocative recurrent images of snakes and orchids, [Roemer] follows her young protagonist, Noenka, from a brief marriage into a voyage of sexual and existential self-discovery….Noenka—young, queer, Black, Jewish, and neither married nor fully single—is in a precarious position, and real danger seems always to be around the bend, alongside the ‘incurable illness of True Love.’ By the end, On a Woman’s Madness is plainly a love story, but one that reminds readers that, more often than not, our social conditions matter just as much as the company we keep.’
‘My novel was a search among some of my personal questions: is it possible to be or to become a ‘happy woman’ in post-slavery/colonial Paramaribo/Suriname?
In my mid-twenties I was mad about cosmology and other related science – living in Holland, buying books, trying to dive into difficult physics. In a way, I’d been slowly scanning my tiny universe, too. It was like daydreaming my pain away. I never thought of publishing any of those intimate writings. It happened and I’m still blushing.’
Read the full interview here.
‘On a Woman’s Madness was my debut novel translation, so I didn’t have a work process of my own at the time. I followed the process that Daniel Hahn described in his translation diary of Diamela Eltit’s Never Did the Fire. I completed a rough draft while reading the book for the first time and iteratively improved my translation through subsequent drafts over several months.’
Read the full interview here.
