The Double Room

Original Title: Chambre Double

Publication: 2023

Author: Anne Sénès

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. 

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Original 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