New Release: Clay by Franck Bouysse

A Dark, Lyrical Tale of War, Vengeance, and Buried Passions

Critically acclaimed French author Franck Bouysse, a master of gothic noir, returns this month with his latest novel, “Clay: A Novel”—a powerful, Faulknerian story of love, masculinity, and vengeance set against the backdrop of World War I. It is available for pre-order. (Other Press, 2025)
Release Date: May 20, 2025

A Story Set in Shadows and Heat

In the summer of 1914, in the rugged heart of Cantal, France, the able-bodied men of a rural mountain community march off to war. Left behind are the women, the elderly, and the young—those who must now bear the weight of survival.

Fifteen-year-old Joseph is one of them. With his father gone, he’s left to run the family farm alongside his mother, grandmother, and their aging neighbor Leonard. Across the property line lives Valette, a bitter man excused from the war due to a malformed hand. When his brother’s wife and daughter seek refuge with him, their arrival ignites long-simmering resentments and awakens passions that had long been buried.

Gothic Noir Meets Historical Fiction

Clay is a haunting, propulsive novel that blurs the line between historical fiction and literary noir. With richly textured prose and emotionally raw characters, Bouysse crafts a deeply affecting narrative of isolation, violence, and human resilience. The novel explores themes of abuse, family bonds, suppressed desire, and the way trauma seeps through generations.

This is essential reading for fans of Bouysse’s previous work and readers who love dark, atmospheric fiction in the tradition of Tana French or William Faulkner.

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About the Author

Franck Bouysse was born in France in 1965. Before becoming a full-time writer in 2007, he worked as a biology teacher. His breakout novel, “Born of No Woman,” won multiple prestigious French literary awards, including the Elle Readers’ Grand Prize, the Booksellers’ Prize, and the Prix Babelio. His follow-up, “Wind Drinkers,” received the Prix Jean Giono and further cemented his reputation as a leading voice in contemporary French literature.

About the Translator

Lara Vergnaud is a celebrated translator of French literature, known for her work across fiction, nonfiction, and scholarly texts. She has received two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants and a French Voices Grand Prize, and has been nominated for the National Translation Award. Her recent translations include “The Most Secret Memory of Men” by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and “Demoiselles of Numidia” by Mohamed Leftah. She currently lives in France.

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Advance Praise for Franck Bouysse (Clay):

“Franck Bouysse builds novels like an architect, writes prose like a painter, and with Clay captures both the beauty and bleakness of nature, the horrors of conflict and matters of the human heart with a poet’s precision. This is a masterwork of historical fiction—born of the Cantal region’s people as much as its mountains, rivers, and soil—that renders with staggering authenticity the volatile dramas created in the voids of the Great War. A translation to be cherished, Clay is an unforgettable story…superb, sublime, and heartbreaking.”
—Peter Farris, award-winning author of The Devil Himself