Anne Serre has been named one of six finalists for the 2025 International Booker Prize, which honours the finest works of fiction translated into English and published in the UK. Her novel A Leopard-Skin Hat, translated by Mark Hutchinson and published by Lolli Editions in 2024, was announced as part of the shortlist on 8 April.
Originally published in French as Un chapeau léopard (Éditions Mercure de France, 2008), the novel tells the story of a complex and tender bond between the narrator and his childhood fiend Fanny, a young woman tormented by psychological illness. Though a mosaic of short, lyrical scenes, Serre constructs a portrait of devotion steeped in love, anguish and helplessness. The narrator’s voice, by turns gentle and bewildered, moves in step with fanny’s shifting inner world, charting the course of a friendship both radiant and devastating.
Written in the wake of the authors’ own loss—her young sister’s death— A Leopard-Skin Hat is at once an elegy and an act of remembrance. The novel plays with narrative conventions, distilling emotions through a style that is unmistakably Serre’s: pared-down, incisive, and brimming with quiet intensity. Described by Le Point as a ‘masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance’, it may be her most affecting work to date.
Serre is one of two French authors to appear on this year’s six nominees at the year’s International Booker shortlist, alongside Vincent Delecroix, whose Small Boat has also been recognised. Delecroix will present his novel on London this May, with appearances scheduled at Brixton Library (17 May) and the Southbank Centre (18 May).