The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own.

This is La Réunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents’ reign of terror and turns to school for salvation. 

Rich in the history of the island’s customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you.


‘A novel that is as beautiful as it is brutal. Life in La Reunion is described in brilliantly vivid, unflinching, and at times, humorous prose. This is a story that will transport you across the world with its incredible narrator, characters and places, but despite the distance, our narrator does what great voices do: whispers, we are all the same.’ Kevin Curran, author of Youth

‘Vivacious and mordantly funny, the tragicomic voice of There's a Monster Behind the Door is forensically and brilliantly merciless.’ Wendy Erskine

‘Harsh, hilarious, spine chilling and heart warming – an unmissable French debut.’ Michelle Gallen

‘A tour-de-force as volcanic as the little island of La Réunion, a tiny sliver of France marooned in the Indian Ocean, “a heap of rubble on the edge of the world”. The narrator of Gaëlle Bélem’s novel, a little girl no-one wanted, the unloved daughter of the Dessaintes, is determined to be someone, to tell the story of her family, and through them the story of an island founded on slavery, poverty, cruelty and superstition with a caustic wit and a keen eye. It is a tragi-comedy worthy of Zola, candid and unflinching, yet shot through with humour and poignancy and even a glimmer of hope. Bélem’s novel is a joyous discovery and in Laëtitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood she has found translators alert to the nuances of French and Creole and to the poetry threaded through this startling début.’ Frank Wynne, translator, 2022 International Booker Prize – chair of the judges

Translated by: Karen Fleetwood, Laetitia Saint-Loubert