Our book club welcomes people from all round the world for a discussion about a work of fiction which has recently been translated into English. We meet on Zoom once a month during Trinity's term time. Admission is free, and participants may join as and when it suits. This month, we will be discussing:

There's a Monster behind the Door

by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from the French by Karen Fleetwood & Laëtitia Saint-Loubert.

[from the book cover]:

The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own.

This is La Réunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents’ reign of terror and turns to school for salvation.

Rich in the history of the island’s customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you.

Gaëlle Bélem is from Réunion. She is the author of two novels in French – Un monstre est là, derrière la porte (2020) and Le fruit le plus rare (2023) – both published by Gallimard. She teaches Latin, History and Geography to secondary school students and works as an associate judge in a juvenile court.

Karen Fleetwood has previously translated into English Jules Verne’s Le Rayon vert (2009) and Les Forceurs de blocus (2011), both published by Luath Press, Scotland.

Laëtitia Saint-Loubert is a literary translator specializing in Caribbean and Indian Ocean literature and has previously lectured at the University of Reunion Island. Her first monograph, The Caribbean in Translation: Remapping Thresholds of Dislocation (Oxford, Peter Lang), was published in 2020. She currently teaches translation and Translation Studies at Nantes University.

If you enjoy events about literary translation, take a look at what else we have planned at the Centre, here.