About the book: Heatwave (2021) is the winner of the Prix de la vocation 2019; the winner of the Prix Femina de lycéens 2019; and was longlisted for the Crime Writers Association 'Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger' 2022.
Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothing.
It is the end of August and the long summer holidays are drawing to a close. Seventeen-year-old Leonard is on a camping holiday with his family in the South of France. Awkward and ill at ease, he is an outsider who creeps away from parties unnoticed after a couple of drinks.
On the final Friday of the trip, unable to sleep, Leonard goes for a walk and sees one of the boys from the campsite, Oscar, hanging from the rope of a playground swing. Leonard watches as the rope slowly strangles Oscar. Then, unable to think straight, he buries the body in the sand, and returns to his tent.
The next day is the hottest in seventeen years. Disoriented by the oppressive heat, and distracted by his desire for a girl named Luce, Leonard spends the ensuing hours trying not to unravel.
A literary sensation in France, Heatwave is an unsettling and utterly original debut novel that examines our darkest impulses.
Heatwave (2021) is translated by Sam Taylor from the original La chaleur in the French language.
About the author: Victor Jestin is a twenty-six-year-old writer (now thirty years old) and screenwriter. He grew up in northwestern France and now lives in Paris. Heatwave is his debut novel. Originally published by Flammarion under the title La chaleur, it won the Prix Femina des Lycéens and was nominated for the Prix Médicis and Prix Renaudot.
About the translator: Sam Taylor grew up in England, spent a decade in France and now lives in the United States. He is the author of four novels and the award-winning translator of more than sixty books from the French, including Laurent Binet's HHhH, Leïla Slimani's The Perfect Nanny and Maylis de Kerangal's The Heart.
Rating: 5/5
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