America, the 2000s. Twelve-year-old Milly is the daughter of Bosnian refugees. Although she was born in exile, she struggles to assimilate: her family lives in a neighborhood for impoverished immigrants, and in the city they are almost untouchable and therefore worthy of all kinds of humiliation. A bloody yet unexpectedly poignant story of our times is accompanied by chthonic visions: fragments of a children’s fairy tale about the Heart-eater.
In the whirlpool of hatred, which demands ever new senseless sacrifices, love does not have time to mature. Yet it still breaks through in sprouts, and this novel resembles the story of Romeo and Juliet.
Nastassja Rugani is a French writer. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a neurologist to save people from nightmares. But then she realized that one can live with nightmares by putting them on paper. Among Rugani's nominations and awards are Sesame (2016), Vendredi (2018, 2021), and Sorcieres (2019).
