"Maylis de Kerangal conjures the same painterly realism her characters hope to achieve in paint" London Magazine

"Evocative and exhilerating" Booklist

"Maylis de Kerangal is mining a rich and individual seam" TImes Literary Supplement

Behind the ornate doors of the Institut de Peinture in Brussels, Kate, Jonas and Paula begin their apprenticeship in decorative painting, the art of visual deception. An intense year of study will cement a friendship that lasts long after their formal education ends.

Paula's initiation into trompe l'oeil will take her back through time and place as she strives for perfection. From her work on the film sets of Cinecittà to the prehistoric caves of Lascaux, her experiences will transcend artistic endeavour and gradually reveal something of her own inner world and the secret, unreachable desires of her heart.

This is a coming-of-age novel like no other: an atmospheric and highly aesthetic portrayal of love, art and craftsmanship from the prize-winning author of Birth of a Bridge and Mend the Living.

Translated from the French by Jessica Moore

As she has so often done, de Kerangal shows there is poetry to be found in our jargon, and stories embedded in our tools . . . This is writing that defies haste, that slows the eye. It is also a mighty feat of translation . . . Cements [de Kerangal's] reputation as one of contemporary fiction's most gifted sentence builders -- Beejay Silcox * Guardian *
The book is a joyful testament to the rigours of research, and to the translator's art too . . . Maylis de Kerangal is mining a rich and individual seam -- Jonathan Gibbs * TLS *
Intensely alive, encompassing both the technical and the poetic, emotion and cerebrality -- Raphaëlle Leyris * Le Monde *
Always brilliant, executed in flowing, lyrical prose that had already reached the firmament in [Mend the Living] . . . De Kerangal finds fiction in reality; precise, technical vocabulary is imbued with rich imagination and meaning. And mastering trompe-l'œil - isn't that the ideal metaphor for the work of a novelist? -- Frédérique Roussel * Libération *
The art of painting in perfect harmony with de Kerangal's writing; visual, flamboyant, assured . . . in perfect alignment with her subject -- Marine Landrot * Télérama *

Kerangal's elegant, sexy, subtly Proustian, and fluidly dimensional drama of discipline and passion, imitation and
imagination is resplendently evocative and exhilarating.

Maylis de Kerangal spent her childhood in Le Havre, France. Her novel, Birth of a Bridge, was the winner of the Prix Franz Hessel and Prix Médicis in 2010. In 2014, her fifth novel, Mend the Living, was published to wide acclaim in France, winning the Grand Prix RTL-Lire award and the student choice novel of the year from France Culture and Télèrama. In the UK, Mend the Living was longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2016, and won the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017 - only the second novel and the first work in translation ever to do so.