Heatwave: An Evening Standard 'Best New Book' of 2021

In Heatwave, a young man named Leonard is forced to spend a family camping holiday in the South of France. On the final night of the trip, he witnesses Oscar, one of the cooler kids, hanging by his neck from a swing. Frozen in inaction, he watches as Oscar struggles to breathe until he finally falls lifeless to the ground. Unable to think straight, Leonard buries Oscar in the sand and tries to spend the remaining hours of the holiday as if nothing had happened.

Format: Hardback
Length: 112 pages
Publication date: 22 July 2021
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd

Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothing

An Evening Standard Best New Book of 2021, 'A Short, Sharp, Shock of a Novel... Beautifully Done'

Daily Mail The modern-day successor to Francoise Sagan

Evening Standard 'Jestin evokes adolescent turmoil with great delicacy and poignancy'

Times Literary Supplement The Summer Page-Turner You Have To Read

Waterstones Winner of the Prix de la vocation 2019

Winner of the Prix Femina de lycéens 2019

Longlisted for the Crime Writers Association Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2022

Translated by Sam Taylor, translator of Lullaby by Leila Slimani, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker, and HHhH by Laurent Binet

Leonard is an outsider, a seventeen-year-old uncomfortable in his own skin who is forced to endure a family camping holiday in the South of France. Tired of awkwardly creeping out of beach parties after only a couple of beers, he chooses to spend the final Friday night of the trip in bed. However, when he cannot sleep due to the sound of wild carousing outside his tent, he gets up and goes for a walk.

As he wanders among the dunes, he sees Oscar, one of the cooler kids, drunk in a playground, hanging by his neck from the ropes of a swing. Frozen into inaction, he watches Oscar struggle to breathe until finally his body comes loose and falls lifeless to the ground. Unable to think straight, he buries Oscar in the sand and returns to the campsite, where, oppressed by the ferocious heat and the weight of what he did and did not do, he will try to spend the remaining hours of the holiday as if nothing had happened.

Told over the space of a long weekend, this intense and brilliant novel is the story of an adolescent struggling to fit in.

Heatwave is a gripping tale of a young man's journey to self-discovery and acceptance.

Weight: 232g
Dimension: 143 x 223 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781471199776