Tuskar snaps up Debré's 'vulnerable' novel

Serpent’s Tail imprint Tuskar Rock Press has scooped French author Constance Debré’s award-winning novel Love Me Tender.

Imprint founders Peter Straus and Colm Tóibín acquired the UK and commonwealth rights, excluding Canada but including audio, for the translation. The deal was struck with Hedi El Kholti, co-editor at North American publisher Semiotext(e).

The English language edition, translated by Holly James, will be published in January 2023 in hardback and as an e-book, with a paperback edition following in February 2024. Semiotext(e) will publish its own edition in September 2022.

The novel depicts a woman severing ties to her previous existence to start a new life, exploring queer identity, motherhood, and the societal pressures that put the two in opposition.

The synopsis states: "When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him.

"She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with, Constance’s approach is monastic and military — she swims daily, reads, writes, and returns to small or borrowed rooms for the night.

"A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge."

The publication will mark the first of Debré’s novels to be published in English. Her debut, Play Boy, was published in France in 2018, followed by Love Me Tender, originally published by Flammarion in 2020. It won the Prix Littéraire des Inrockuptibles. 

Tóibín, co-founder of the imprint, said: “Love Me Tender is written with edge and urgency in a voice that is both vulnerable and in full command. I read it in one sitting and was taken over by its narrative energy and shocked by the story it tells.”