Anne Serre's short novel is the deeply romantic telling of a platonic love story between the narrator and his complicated childhood friend, Fanny; a story so beautifully realised--and translated so sensitively by Mark Hutchinson--that the pair become part of the life of the reader. A perfectly balanced book, slender in size but bearing significant weight all the way through, A Leopard-Skin Hat is testament to the ways in which we continue to hold the people we love in our memories, with respect and dignity, after they die.--jury of the 2025 International Booker Prize
Exuberantly anti-realist and avowedly fictional...The story of Fanny and the Narrator is a story about our impulse to understand one another and about the way in which unknowability is what makes someone interesting.--Meghan Racklin "The Brooklyn Rail"
Readers will be moved by this probing story about the unknowability of others.-- "Publishers Weekly"
I love Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson, for the rippling unreality of her prose. Reading her is like watching a mirage flicker in and out of focus.--Merve Emre
Genuinely original--and, often, very quietly so.--Parul Sehgal "The New York Times"
Putting down one of Anne Serre's books is like coming up for air.--Lucie Elven "London Review of Books"
Wry, unconventional.-- "The New Yorker"