Hèléne Cixous — author, playwright and French feminist theorist — is a key figure in twentieth-century literary theory. Stigmata brings together her most recent essays for the first time.Acclaimed for her intricate and challenging writing style, Cixous presents a collection of texts that get away — escaping the reader, the writers, the book. Cixous's writing pursues authors such as Stendhal, Joyce, Derrida, and Rembrandt, da Vinci, Picasso — works that share an elusive movement in spite of striking differences. Along the way these essays explore a broad range of poetico-philosophical questions that have become characteristic of Cixous' work:•love's labours lost and found•feminine hours•autobiographies of writing•the prehistory of the work of artStigmata goes beyond theory, becoming an extraordinary writer's testimony to our lives and times.