Book Launch : There’s a Monster Behind the Door

The French Embassy is delighted to support the launch of the novel There’s a Monster Behind the Door by French author Gaëlle Bélem, published by the Irish publisher Bullaun Press.

In this first English translation of her work, award-winning novelist Bélem plunges us into a vivid world of extremes – 1980s’ Réunion, where ‘quiet times & places are rare.’ Full of juice & pith,There’s a Monster Behind the Door is a darkly humorous exploration of postcolonial history & identity.
Gaëlle Bélem is the first reunionese woman to be published by the French publisher Gallimard and internationally.
Professor Michael Cronin will officially launch the book in the presence of the author and her two translators Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert.

Winner of Grand Prix du Roman Métis (2020)
Winner of Prix André Dubreuil du Premier Roman (2020)

More information here

About the Author
Award-winning author from Réunion, Gaëlle Bélem has published two novels in French – Un monstre est là, derrière la porte & Le fruit le plus rare – both from Gallimard, in 2020 & 2023 respectively.
She teaches Latin, History & Geography to secondary school students & works as an associate judge in a juvenile court.

About the Translators
Karen Fleetwood has previously translated Jules Verne’s Le Rayon vert & Les Forceurs de blocus for Luath Press.
Literary translator & author of The Caribbean in Translation, Laëtitia Saint-Loubert currently teaches Translation Studies at Nantes University, having recently completed an Irish Research Council postdoc at UCD.

About the Press
A recent arrival on the Irish publishing scene, Bullaun Press has chosen literature in translation as its focus.
It is the first such press of this kind in Ireland, aspiring to open up a space for readers seeking new and different voices.
They are set to publish a translation of Bélem’s second novel next year.

Praise for the book

A novel that is as beautiful as it is brutal. Life in La Reunion is described in brilliantly vivid, unflinching, and at times, humorous prose. This is a story that will transport you across the world with its incredible narrator, characters and places, but despite the distance, our narrator does what great voices do: whispers, we are all the same.
Kevin Curran, author of Youth

Vivacious and mordantly funny, the tragicomic voice of There’s a Monster Behind the Door is forensically and brilliantly merciless.’ Wendy Erskine
‘Harsh, hilarious, spine chilling and heart warming – an unmissable French debut
Michelle Gallen.

A tour-de-force as volcanic as the little island of La Réunion, a tiny sliver of France marooned in the Indian Ocean, “a heap of rubble on the edge of the world.The narrator of Gaëlle Bélem’s novel, a little girl no-one wanted, the unloved daughter of the Dessaintes, is determined to be someone, to tell the story of her family, and through them the story of an island founded on slavery, poverty, cruelty and superstition with a caustic wit and a keen eye.
It is a tragi-comedy worthy of Zola, candid and unflinching, yet shot through with humour and poignancy and even a glimmer of hope. Bélem’s novel is a joyous discovery and in Laëtitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood she has found translators alert to the nuances of French and Creole and to the poetry threaded through this startling début.
Frank Wynne, translator, 2022 International Booker Prize – chair of the judges