Annabella Morelli is twenty-three years old, dreams of becoming a poet and lives in Lyon, far from Congo-Brazzaville where she was born, the daughter of a Franco-Italian worker, and a Congolese girl who became a mother too young. Annabella remembers a happy childhood until one Christmas, when she was seven, her father's anger exploded, and her mother left the family home.

When she learns of his death in Cameroon, her world collapses for the second time and in her desperate attempt to repatriate her father’s body to France, Annabella is forced to confront the family secrets, lies and deep trauma at the heart of her existence. This stunning debut explores grief, family relationships, personal truths and the post-colonial condition with beautiful, urgent writing. It was the winner of the 2024 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman.

Prizes

Winner of Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman 2024 (France)

From Old Lyon to the forests of Gabon, from the Atlantic coast to Douala, Ève Guerra weaves a dazzling first novel about exile and all that goes unspoken, in language as painful as a Baudelaire verse.

Her agile language blends romantic descriptions, poetic and dramatic prose. She abolishes the boundaries between sounds and words, inner dialogue and conversations.

Ève Guerra unleashes a cry of love and hate together that echoes her own story, and attempts to exorcise the pain of absence.

Through crystal-clear writing that plays with chiaroscuro and shattered identities, Ève Guerra anchors her heroine to reality. Dreaming of being a poet and sometimes preferring "fiction to life itself," she entrusts the reader with a prodigious first novel of love and grief.

Her novel is also a beautiful portrait of a contemporary young woma, forced to cope with a tragic, unbearable inheritance.