My friend and colleague Margaret Atack, who has died of cancer aged 75, was known predominantly for her work on French literature of and about the second world war. She was as interested in popular detective fiction set in this period as she was in the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and brought to all of her writing an encyclopaedic knowledge of theory across several disciplines, as well as a strong commitment to feminism.
Margaret’s first book – influential and much cited – was Literature and the French Resistance: Cultural Politics and Narrative Forms 1940-1950 (1989). This was followed by May 68 in French Fiction and Film: Rethinking Representation, Rethinking Society (1991). Her most recent publication was Jean-François Vilar: Theatres of Crime, (2020), about the French political crime writer.
