Hélène Bessette (1918-2000) published thirteen novels with Gallimard between 1953 and 1973, won the Cazes prize in 1954 and was twice in the running for the Goncourt prize and the Médicis prize.

'AT LAST, SOMETHING NEW.'
-- Raymond Queneau, author of Zazie in the Metro

'Living literature, for me, in France today - it's Hélène Bessette.'
-- Marguerite Duras

'Lili is Crying is not straightforwardly tragic - as the title may initially trick us into believing - but darkly funny, marvellously strange, insistently performative and, somehow, truer than true.'
-- Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes

'This book is brilliant and bizarre, a Grey Gardens-esque tragicomedy, as if written by a sinister cousin of Stevie Smith.'
-- Camilla Grudova, author of The Coiled Serpent

'Lili is Crying is stunning: a choral fever-dream of a book cycling through passion and despair, loyalty and betrayal. Bessette's cadence and lyrical concision are bewitching and necessarily airless, much like the mother-daughter relationship they chronicle. It's also a vivid and unforgettable portrait of place - a sun-drenched landscape with world war at its fringes, and the slow fade of one era into another. Kate Briggs's translation is a powerful channelling of Bessette's voice: distinct, unapologetic and eerily present.'
-- Daisy Lafarge, author of Lovebug

'I'm grateful to Kate Briggs for her translation of Lili Is Crying - a tragic, comic, invigorating book with an eccentric staccato style that blurs speech and thought.'
-- Kathryn Scanlan, author of Kick the Latch

'A manic, brilliant maze of a book. Circular, cinematic, comic.'
-- Sinéad Gleeson, author of Hagstone

Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions

Pub date: 2025-06-05

Length: 170 pages