Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
“Of those three women, I had to start with the first, the one who was barely twenty-five when she ran away, and the only one still alive today. That woman is me.”
When in 2021 Nathacha Appanah learned of the death of Chahinez Daoud, burned alive by her husband in broad daylight near Bordeaux, she had no choice but to confront her own buried story of violence and that of her cousin Emma, killed by her husband in Mauritius in 2000. Appanah recounts her own panicked escape, then sets out to reconstruct the gyre in which Chahinez and Emma were caught. She seeks the deeper truth of these women, beyond time and secrets, through the words of the living and the whispers of the dead.
On the edge between strength and humility, Nathacha Appanah takes a hard look at the unbearable enigma of domestic violence, when darkness overshadows love.
"The pace is fast, the writing delves into the feeling of indignation. This is the prose of a great novelist serving a cause of our time."
— Lire
"Rarely has panic been so perfectly captured. All the more terrifying because the predator's calm is absolute."
— Jean-Marc Proust, Slate France
" Night at Heart is a violent, splendid, necessary book."
— ELLE France
"In a deeply personal account, Nathacha Appanah offers a poignant reflection on violence against women."
— Livres Hebdo
"La Nuit au cœur is a text of rare power, probing with remarkable transparency and honesty the impotence of literature, its darkness, its silence."
— Copélia Mainardi, Télérama
"Nathacha Appanah has created a book of memory and struggle that intertwines these three true stories, these “three erasures.” Beautiful, tragic, and often unbearable."
— Le Devoir
"Part testimony, part investigation, part reconstruction, [La nuit au cœur] lies at the crossroads of several literary genres. And the author hasn't simply juxtaposed these three tragic stories. She has skillfully woven them together, allowing them to resonate and illuminate one another. With a restrained and understated style, Appanah has also managed to avoid the pitfall of voyeurism."
— Radio Télévision Suisse
"A powerful and masterful text on coercive control and femicide."
— Le Parisien
“Powerful, piercing. . . . A stunning book, of impressive literary power.”
— Elisabeth Philippe, Le Nouvel Obs
"One of the most striking books of this literary season, leaving the reader shaken and haunted."
— Lisbeth Koutchoumoff Arman, Le Temps
"A literary tour de force."
— Le Point
"There's a sense of urgency in this book, which, once the author begins, unfolds across the pages. It's difficult for her, but it's a necessity, as she explains very well. Writing allows her to get as close as possible to the femicide by recounting what happened without embellishment, without omitting the final moments of these women's lives. It's another way for the author to restore to them a humanity that the media (among others) erases."
— Sébastien Paley, Benzine
"An essential book."
— L'Humanité
"A rare and compelling testimony."
— Huffington Post