Iosi Havilio
Petite Fleur
When his fireworks factory job ends explosively and his wife returns to work, José is surprised to realise he has a talent for keeping house: childcare, tidying, cleaning, cooking, gardening, he excels at it all. On Thursdays, he hangs out and drinks good wine with his jazz-loving neighbour. But when José’s new talents take a sudden and gruesome turn, life, death, resurrection, and domesticity unexpectedly converge. In one single, hypnotic paragraph, Petite Fleur harnesses the unpredictability of Aira and the mysticism of Tolstoy in a discordant riff on suburban life.
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Print status: Available
Author: Iosi Havilio
Translator: Lorna Scott Fox
Original language: Spanish
Format: B-format paperback
Publication date: 3 August 2017
ISBN: 9781911508045
Ebook ISBN: 9781911508052
Number of pages: 128
Reviews
Yuri Herrera
‘As vertiginous, airtight and intense as a dream.’
Le Figaro
‘You’ll read Petite Fleur in a single sitting, carried along by the lively rhythm and a wacky plot leavened by a blend of darkness and cruelty. We don’t often come across this kind of novel, a drama played for laughs.’
Marie Claire (France)
‘An absolute masterpiece.’
The Economist
'An ambiguous tale that verges on dark comedy . . . With skill and subtlety, the novel hints that a whole society might labour under an illusion of liberty.’
Amanda Hopkinson
The Independent
A haunting tale set in the aftermath of an apocalypse . . . Iosi Havilio has caused a literary storm in Argentina’
Fatema Ahmed
Prospect
‘Deliberately unshowy, so that plot twists can unfold in the quietest ways.’
Chloe Aridjis
‘With minimalist beauty and exquisite strangeness, Iosi Havilio offers a mesmerising addition to the literature of solitude.’
Nick DiMartino
Shelf Awareness
‘Havilio’s passion lies with the powerless. An inexhaustible stream of eccentric, believable characters, the down-and-out, downtrodden marginal citizens of Buenos Aires, parades through his fiction.'
