Dead zones

Published by Semiotext(e) in 1998 under the title Airless Spaces, Zones Dead is Shulamith Firestone's debut novel. She writes these short news as she gradually moves away from an activist career feminist and finds herself in a state increasingly close to asphyxiation. These stories are those of people struggling with poverty almost New York's institutional assets, endangered by the back-and-forth between psychiatric hospital and sclerotic daily life. On the back cover of The original edition reads the words of poet Eileen Myles: "The twentieth century, which is most familiar to me, has not finished exploding into particles of thinner and thinner. The radical fable that Shulamith tells us from the inside Firestone seeps into us like a fine abrasive rain. It announces to us a disappearance orchestrated by the institutionalization of this century, which strips away our entire being until there is no one left to close the door. The French edition offered here, in a translation by Émilie Notéris, is accompanied by a text by Chris Kraus, author and first editor of the book.