Author(s): Jakuta Alikavazovic

Novel | Translated fiction

A deeply contemporary and mesmerising novel about love, destruction, silences and the traces we leave behind.

Paul, a student who works as a night guard in a hotel to make ends meet, falls under the spell of Amelia, the young woman who rents room 313. Everything about her is a mystery: where she goes, what she does - and where she comes from.

Paul and Amelia enter into a love affair, but it is an ill-fated dance informed by sex, power and class struggles. One day Amelia suddenly disappears. Unknown to Paul, she has traveled to Sarajevo in search of her mother and to attempt to uncover the links that connect her personal history to the civil war that created ruptures that still affect Europe today.

In this passionate, sexy - and often beguilingly wry - novel, Jakuta Alikavazovic delivers a work rich in thoughts on modernity, prejudice and human fallibility. It is the first work in English by a major European literary star and establishes the arrival of a virtuoso and blazing voice.

Author Biography: Jakuta Alikavazovic is a French writer of Bosnian and Montenegrin origins. She was born in Paris, where she studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and where she now lives. She has lived in In the UK and in Italy, where she was a resident at the Villa Medicis in Rome in 2013-2014. Her first novel, Corps Volatils (2008) won the Goncourt Prize for best first novel and her second and third novels, Le Londres-Luxor (2010) and La Blonde et Le Bunker (2012) won prizes in France and Italy. Her new novel, L'Avancee de la Nuit, was a lead title of the 'Rentree 2017' with L'Olivier in France. She is also the translator of Ben Lerner and of the essays of David Foster Wallace and teaches at la Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Promotional Information: A deeply contemporary and mesmerising novel about love, destruction, silences and the traces we leave behind.