Milly Vodovich

America, 2000s. Twelve-year-old Milly is the daughter of Bosnian refugees. Despite being born in emigration, she struggles to assimilate: her family lives in a neighborhood for poor immigrants, and in the city, they are almost untouchable and consequently deserving of... all sorts of humiliation. A bloody yet unexpectedly poignant story of our times is accompanied by chthonic visions: fragments of a children's fairy tale about Heart-Eater.

In the whirlpool of hatred, demanding ever more meaningless victims, love fails to mature. But still, it breaks through as shoots, and this novel reminds one of the story of Romeo and Juliet.

Nastassia Rugani is a French writer. In childhood, 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).