Prix Goncourt-winner Slimani moves to Coronet for ‘deeply felt’ non-fiction début

Leïla Slimani, the award-winning author of Lullaby and The Country of Others (Faber), has moved to Coronet with her non-fiction debut The Scent of Flowers at Night.

Harriet Poland, editorial director at Coronet, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the “deeply felt meditation on art and life" from Editions Stock for publication in hardback, e-book and audiobook in April 2023.

The publisher’s synopsis reads: “In the closing days of 2018, celebrated novelist Leïla Slimani found herself beset by a perilous problem for those in her profession – writer’s block.

“An unexpected phone call offers her a route into the heart of creativity, and perhaps through that a solution; a night alone in the Punta della Dogona Museum, in Venice. In those small hours, Slimani grapples with the self as it is revealed in solitude.

“In a place of old and new, she confronts her past and her present through her life as a Moroccan woman, as a writer, and as a daughter. Surrounded by the transcendent she explores what it means to behold and clasp beauty, and enveloped by night she uncovers essential truths of life and death.”

Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for Lullaby. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French President Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. Born in Rabat, Morocco, she lives in Paris with her French husband and their two young children.

Poland said: “In this deeply felt meditation on art and life, Slimani travels from the grand to the intimate, the ephemeral to the corporeal. And in contemplating the promise and threat of a woman alone in the night, she proves herself, yet again, a writer of exhilarating honesty. We are so proud to publish this important book in English.”