Lilia Hassaine explores gender-based violence through a retelling of Jane Eyre in her novel "I"

"I," the latest novel by Lilia Hassaine, has made the first selection for the Goncourt Prize. The work retells the classic story of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, but from the perspective of Bertha Antoinette Rochester, Mr Rochester's first wife, locked away in an attic for ten years because of her "supposed madness."

In Hassaine's telling, Bertha Antoinette Rochester is no longer presented as the perpetrator but as the victim of a violent and manipulative man. This retelling transforms the woman deemed mentally ill and dangerous into a victim under the control of another, while exploring the timeless nature of gender-based violence from the nineteenth century to today.