Darkly comedic and wonderfully strange, Twenty Minutes of Silence is a truly original take on the crime genre, inspired by a true story. 

In an opulent villa near the English Channel lives a family. The father has a safe, a spanner, a candle and a maid called Rose. The son has a swing, a croquet set, a raincoat, a car. Some members of the family read crime novels to fall asleep (the father), some instead of sleeping (the son), and some to ease the loneliness of an unhappy marriage (the mother). Their equilibrium is shattered in the wake of a shocking incident and the twenty minutes of silence that follow. Darkly comedic and wonderfully strange, Twenty Minutes of Silence is a truly original take on the crime genre, inspired by a true story. Here Hélène Bessette builds a world of intrigue, a world punctured by startling disruptions and unexpected shifts, and in doing so destroys and remakes the crime novel, creating a form wholly new. 

Details

ISBN13: 9781804272152
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 180
Edition:
Publication Date: 22 Sep 2026
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x12.1(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

Hélène Bessette (1918-2000) published thirteen novels with Gallimard between 1953 and 1973, won the Cazes prize in 1954 and was twice in the running for the Goncourt prize and the Médicis prize.

Reviews

‘Exhilarating... A haunting commentary on isolation and neurosis, speaking to contemporary voyeurism. What are we escaping? The novel leaves us with the language of violence, tragedy and death – and the vitalizing instruction to play with it.’
— Maya Kulukundis, Irish Times

'Twenty Minutes of Silence is a sublimely rare thing: a feat of experimentation that defies comparison. Hélène Bessette's phrasings (translated by the brilliant Kate Briggs) pulse with a bass drum and freewheeling speed, as she upends the sentence so that we can reconsider our relationship to language and the stories we tell with it. Thrilling.'
— Makenna Goodman, author of Helen of Nowhere

‘Discovering Hélène Bessette through Kate Briggs’ incredible translations has felt like having a light switched on. I can feel so many of us excitedly learning and re-exploring the potential of the novel, which as a form, multiplies in Twenty Minutes of Silence. The brilliant modernist and anti-commercial styles that run through it feel perfect for us now and I am grateful we get to write and think in the extraordinary milieu of Bessette and Briggs.’
— Holly Pester, author of The Lodgers

'Lili is Crying is stunning: a choral fever-dream of a book cycling through passion and despair, loyalty and betrayal. Bessette’s cadence and lyrical concision are bewitching and necessarily airless, much like the mother-daughter relationship they chronicle. It’s also a vivid and unforgettable portrait of place – a sun-drenched landscape with world war at its fringes, and the slow fade of one era into another. Kate Briggs’s translation is a powerful channelling of Bessette’s voice: distinct, unapologetic and eerily present.'
— Daisy Lafarge, author of Lovebug (praise for Lili is Crying)

‘First published in 1955, the stimulating second novel by Bessette to be translated into English centers on a murder, though it’s no simple whodunit…. This slippery and satisfying novel probes the unresolvable mysteries of life.’
— Publishers Weekly

'I’m grateful to Kate Briggs for her translation of Lili is Crying – a tragic, comic, invigorating book with an eccentric staccato style that blurs speech and thought.'
— Kathryn Scanlan, author of Kick the Latch (praise for Lili is Crying)

'A manic, brilliant maze of a book. Circular, cinematic, comic.'
— Sinéad Gleeson, author of Hagstone (praise for Lili is Crying)

'This book is brilliant and bizarre, a Grey Gardens-esque tragicomedy, as if written by a sinister cousin of Stevie Smith.'
— Camilla Grudova, author of The Coiled Serpent (praise for Lili is Crying)

'Lili is Crying is not straightforwardly tragic – as the title may initially trick us into believing – but darkly funny, marvellously strange, insistently performative and, somehow, truer than true.'
— Saba Sams, author of Gunk (praise for Lili is Crying)