The Double Room
London, late 1990s.
Stan, a young and promising French composer, is invited to arrange the music for a theatrical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play will never be staged, but Stan will meet the love of his life there, Liv, and their harmonious duo soon becomes a trio with the birth of their beloved daughter, Lisa.
Paris, Mouzaïa district, today.
After Liv's fatal accident, Stan returns to France surrounded by darkness. He now shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a boy of Lisa's age, and Laïvely, a machine of his own invention endowed with Liv's voice. But Stan remains haunted by his past and as false notes and discord increase, and memories and reality blur, the family implodes.
Request more informationOriginal Language
FRENCH | Le bruit du monde
Translation Rights
ENGLISH (World) | Orenda Books
Prizes
Shortlisted for the 2023 Prix du roman «Villeneuve se livre»
Reviews
"Anne Sénès offers us a "double room" in which "perfumes, colors and sounds respond to one another" in the manner of Baudelaire. Poetic and so close to reality!" Marie Theron, Librairie Charlemagne
"This first novel is a tremendous success. It is one of those books - alas, increasingly rare - from which one does not emerge unscathed. From London to Paris, reality crumbles, certainties fall like petals from faded flowers. Each page conceals a mystery, a twist. Readers do not merely follow the characters, they travel alongside them, waiting for a denouement, turning the pages with an ever-increasing frenzy. This new author, Anne Sénès, is exciting. Her work perfectly fulfills the primary mission of a novel: to take us far from ourselves and fill us with emotions, to surprise us, to make us travel in the infinite range of feelings." Jean-Paul Delfino, author of Les Pêcheurs d'étoiles and Guyanes