Herve, the friend with AIDS; his lover, Herve, also afflicted; Herve the hairdresser; Herve next door who has defenestrated himself: in A Cannibal and Melancholy Mourning the narrator confronts the deaths of so many friends, all named Herve. But the dead cannot be buried so easily; they live on, spectres haunting her, as the cumulative effect of all her Herves becomes a multifaced Death that simultaneously angers, saddens, cheers and confuses her. In this unfolding series of encounters between the living and the dead, Mavrikakis draws on Deleuze, Freud, Foucault and novelist Herve Guibert to make of herself and of this visceral, compelling novel a kind of living mausoleu where those unable to speak may still be heard.

Translated by: Nathalie Stephens