Sally Mara’s Intimate Diary, dating from 1950, is exceptional; a salacious, black humorous and
meaningful story by the influential and erudite French novelist, Raymond Queneau. When ‘Sally Mara’
begins her diary in January 1934, she is 17 years old and lives with her mother, older brother and
younger sister in south central Dublin. The everyday language is, of course, English, but she is writing
in ‘newly-learned’ French to impress her beloved and just departed French tutor, a professional polyglot
linguist. To impress him even more, she decides to learn Irish in order to write a novel of some kind in
Irish. However, the action throughout is determined by Sally’s resolution to overcome her ignorance of
the mysteries of sex and reproduction.
The often sensual and dark humour of Sally Mara’s Journal intime is founded on language and
languages, so this translation, while prioritizing clarity, aims to maintain ‘Frenchness’, tinged of course
with Dublinese. Surprisingly, for a French author, Irish words and phrases occur throughout; these are
not translated but, like some challenging French phrases, are supported by footnotes.
In 1949, when Raymond Queneau wrote Journal intime, published anonymously under the
pseudonym Sally Mara, he was, as always, greatly influenced by James Joyce and fascinated by the
limitations of language. He was also in need of the ready money provided by Éditions du Scorpion,
publishers of erotic and violent pulp fiction, and of Journal intime.
Author Biography:
Raymond Queneau (1903–1976) is a key figure of mid twentieth century French literature. He was
a novelist, poet/songwriter, screenwriter, encyclopaedist, mathematician and painter. He was also a
literary innovator and theoretician, and cofounded L’Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (OuLiPo) a
fertile association of writers interested in constrained writing techniques. A senior editor with the
prestigious publishers Gallimard, he also mentored aspiring writers (e.g. Marguerite Duras, Patrick
Modiano, Nobel 2104) and was a judge for the annual Prix Goncourt. He is especially well known for
the novel Zazie dans le Metro (1959) filmed by Louis Malle.
James Gosling, translator of and commentator on this work has previously published appreciations
of Queneau’s Sally Mara works (Raymond Queneau’s Dubliners, Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2019; Queneau philologue, Sally romancière, Éditions universitaires de Dijon, in press).
