Oscar and the Lady in Pink

Oscar and the Lady in Pink is a novel by the French writer Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, published in 2002. It forms the third part of the so-called «Cycle de l'invisible», a series of works in which the author explores the meaning of life and faith through characters in extreme situations. The author himself adapted it for the stage in 2003, and it was later made into a film in 2009.

The protagonist is Oscar, a ten-year-old boy who lives in a children's hospital because he suffers from leukaemia. There he meets the so-called «Pink Ladies», volunteers who keep company with the young patients, and especially Mamie-Rose, the oldest of the group, a former wrestler known as «the Strangler of Languedoc». Mamie-Rose is the only one who does not avoid the word «death» with the boy, and she suggests he write letters to God describing what he feels each day.

The novel is structured around these letters, one per chapter. After a failed bone marrow transplant, Oscar knows his time is short, and his parents' reaction, as they cannot bring themselves to say goodbye, fills him with anger. Mamie-Rose then proposes a game that will let him live each day as if it were ten years long: in a few days he moves through every stage of life, from adolescence and first love to old age. Through this game the story explores the relationship between lived and desired time, and the way the nearness of death changes how one sees the world.

The book also traces Oscar's passage from atheism to belief and from childish selfishness to a form of altruism, without resorting to doctrinal argument. Schmitt writes in a simple style close to a child's voice, with strong emotional force. The novel was a considerable success in France and elsewhere and became one of the author's most widely read works, among both young and adult readers.