A Novel: The Devil’s Reward

Emmanuelle de Villepin was born in France in 1959. As a child, she moved to Geneva (where she later attended law school) and then to New York. She has lived in Milan with her husband and three daughters since 1988. She is the vice-president of Fondazione Dynamo and has been president of the association Amici di TOG (Together to Go), a center for rehabilitation programs for children suffering from complex neurological diseases, since 2011. De Villepin has written several novels, inlcuding Tempo di fuga (2006); La ragazza che non voleva morire (2008), which received the Fenice Europa Prize for spreading Italian novels in Europe; La notte di Mattia (2010), a tale illustrated by her daughter Neige De Benedetti; and La vita che scorre (2013), which received the Rapallo Carige Prize for women writers in 2014. Her most recent novel, La parte del diavolo (2016), was shortlisted for the Stresa Prize. De Villepin is fluent in French, Italian, and English.Christopher Delogu grew up in Portland, Maine. He obtained a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Yale University in 1991. He is the author of two books on Emerson and Tocqueville and has translated a dozen books on a variety of topics as well as scholarly articles. Since 2003 he has been professeur des universités (full professor) in the English Department at the Université Jean Moulin—Lyon 3 in Lyon, France.