"In these edited dialogs, Cixous, known in the English-speaking world chiefly as a literary theorist and political activist, is given an opportunity to chat about her fiction, theater, and, most interesting of all, her family...Cixous came from a family of German-speaking Central European Jews who settled in Algeria. Her father was a physician and her mother a midwife in Oran, the site of Camus's The Plague. This work is truly indispensible for filling in the gaps of Cixous's imaginative biograohy of her father...Effectively translated, this is rcommended for larger public and academic collections."

--Library Journal, 1 September 1997

Routledge Web Site, May, 2000

The work of Helene Cixous comprises some of the most radical aesthetic non-conformism in contemporary literature and literary theory. Cixous' great themes of existence, love, birth, death and dreaming nourish an unclassifiable work at the crossroads of diverse disciplines which concern everyone. In Helene Cixous, Rootprints, she explores the subterranean crossings which uncover the most intimate roots: those of childhood and language.

Published here in English for the first time, this work traces Cixous' development as a writer and intellectual, and is an ideal introduction to her theory and her fiction. Unprecedented in its form and content, Helene Cixious, Rootprints breaks new ground in the theory and practice of autobiography. Cixous' creative reflections on the past simultaneously provide occasion for brilliant forays into the future.

Helene Cixous, Rootprints includes an extended interview between Cixous and Calle-Grubar, exploring Cixous' creative and intellectual processes; and a revealing collection of photographs taken from Cixous' family album, illuminating the connections between memory and diaspora. Also included is a stunning preface by Jacques Derrida.