This dissertation examines themes of alterity, empathy, strangeness, and neutral cruelty in four works by Marie NDiaye: Un pas de chat sauvage (2019), La Naufragée (1999), Trois femmes puissantes (2009), and Ladivine (2013). I propose that NDiaye’s unique narrative immersion and corrupted narrative intimacy engender empathy in the reader at the very same time her work shows the limits to empathy in the face of systemic stigmatization. My introduction discusses the novella Un pas de chat sauvage (2019), examining the relationship between the spectator/reader and the text and its artistic subject. I propose that the museum space illustrates the unequal relationship between the reader (museum-goer) and protagonists (historical figure). My first chapter continues these themes as they present historically, in an analysis of La Naufragée (1999). I discuss the novella’s mythological, historical, and political allegories and intertext, and analyze the femme-poisson as an allegory for mixed identity. I examine this novella’s ties to the artist JMW Turner, and propose that the character of the artist is a stand-in for both the writer and the reader, and that the artist’s manipulation of the femme-poisson demonstrates limits to historical witnessing and ethical constraints or violations therein. My second chapter examines themes of representation in the contemporary political moment portrayed in Trois femmes puissantes (2009). I analyze the confines of Frenchness and of artistic obligation to the nation and to the marginalized subject. I propose that Trois femmes puissantes demonstrates mundane systemic cruelty, in its depiction of characters who acknowledge the violence of their actions but persist, illustrating how unwelcoming nations manifest in and harm the individual. My third chapter examines these themes in the context of the personal and familial, in an analysis of Ladivine (2013). I show that Ladivine depicts the psychological damage wrought by everyday alterity and suppression of identity. I also examine autobiographical elements of this novel, and consider it as a fictional récit de filiation. I propose that the novel’s narrative style creates a corrupt narrative intimacy between the text and the reader as opposed to between the author or protagonist and the reader, and that this relationship demonstrates the limits to empathy by purposefully creating an unequal power structure between the reader and the protagonists. I discuss themes of inheritance in the context of motherhood and colonial memory. Finally, I discuss how the novel’s fantastical, literary, and religious allusions depict a cyclical and psychologically tenuous entrapment, forcing the protagonists to reject the world if they wish to inhabit personal identity, as allegorized by animal metamorphosis. My conclusion reflects NDiaye’s engagement with her own work, as presented in several interviews with the author. I propose that NDiaye’s writing is more politically engaged and socially observant than it purports to be. I discuss the contradictions of Marie NDiaye’s catalogue, representative of French universalism and unspoken but lived identity. I also consider the 2003 play Papa doit manger and a review of Trois femmes puissantes, which demonstrate the fraught line between pity, empathy, and appropriative reading.