Ce Nom qui n’est pas le mien (This name that is not my own) is a collection of several autobiographical texts and various essays. It is divided into three parts: Femmes, Lire Écrire and Petite suite personnelle (Women, Reading Writing, and A Personal Sequel). While the first part addresses the status of women, the second addresses that of male and female writers. The last part is more personal, enabling us to get to know the novelist better, her background, her childhood and, in particular, the reasoning behind her chosen pen name.

Un Peuple immense et neuf (An immense new people) reprises the text already published under the title Présence des femmes (Women’s presence) in the journal Suisse contemporaine (Contemporary Switzerland) in 1945. After the end of the war, Alice Rivaz, as a pioneer, denounced the plight imposed on women. She thus became one of the very first voices of feminism, revealing outstanding lucidity, as the second edition of her text proved just as topical in 1980, and still remains pertinent today.

Feu couvert (Covert fire), the first text in this collection, is one of Alice Rivaz’ most personal pieces. It relates the novelist’s adolescence and her friends’ expectations, dreams, and fears as they imagined their future and their future love lives. She writes with both tenderness and irony about marriage, motherhood, and the destiny of women, all of whom are ultimately condemned to “old age and an emotional desert”.

Two texts are particularly noteworthy: Une lecture à la Muette (A reading at la Muette), in homage to C.F. Ramuz, and On me dit lointain et détaché (I am said to be distant and detached) acclaiming the poet Edmond-Henri Crisinel. They highlight Alice Rivaz’ sensitivity and the extraordinary evocative power of her writing.

Finally, the text that gives this collection its name is a lengthy reflection on choosing a pseudonym, raising awareness of the difficulty of assuming two identities. Alice Rivaz also talks about this in Trouée de mille pertuis (An opening of a thousand straits):

And these two names I used created a double allegiance – the pseudonym and the patronym – only there to muddy the waters, always turning their backs on each other, pretending to be strangers, taking turns to push each other out of the nest, going so far as to dismiss one another so that, oscillating between these two names, I ended up no longer knowing how to refer to myself, by any name.