Twenty Minutes of Silence

Darkly comedic and wonderfully strange, Twenty Minutes of Silence is a truly original take on the crime genre, inspired by a true story.

' Twenty Minutes of Silence is a sublimely rare thing: a feat of experimentation that defies comparison. Hélène Bessette's phrasings (translated by the brilliant Kate Briggs) pulse with a bass drum and freewheeling speed, as she upends the sentence so that we can reconsider our relationship to language and the stories we tell with it. Thrilling.'
— Makenna Goodman, author of Helen of Nowhere

‘Discovering Hélène Bessette through Kate Briggs’ incredible translations has felt like having a light switched on. I can feel so many of us excitedly learning and re-exploring the potential of the novel, which as a form, multiplies in Twenty Minutes of Silence . The brilliant modernist and anti-commercial styles that run through it feel perfect for us now and I am grateful we get to write and think in the extraordinary milieu of Bessette and Briggs.’
— Holly Pester, author of The Lodgers

' 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 (praise for Lili is Crying )

‘First published in 1955, the stimulating second novel by Bessette to be translated into English centers on a murder, though it’s no simple whodunit…. This slippery and satisfying novel probes the unresolvable mysteries of life.’
— Publishers Weekly

'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 (praise for Lili is Crying )

'A manic, brilliant maze of a book. Circular, cinematic, comic.'
— Sinéad Gleeson, author of Hagstone (praise for Lili is Crying )

'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 (praise for Lili is Crying )

' 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 Gunk (praise for Lili is Crying )

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.