“Night at the Heart” by Nathacha Appanah, Fémina Prize 2025: a look at three men and their violence

“We can’t imagine.”
This little sentence, very simple, punctuates the prologue of Night in the hearta story thanks to which Nathacha Appanah won the Fémina 2025 prize.

After reading it, we cannot imagine what will follow. Just as, generally speaking, in our everyday life, “to see them like this”a brother, a colleague, a neighbor, “we can’t imagine”. However, this is not a lack of imagination. A lack of attention, of empathy?

Prologue quite mysterious in its exposition of three characters, three men who are linked by nothing except their actions. The first tried to kill his partner, the novelist Nathacha Appanah herself, the other two killed their wives. Then, in a painful text, she then exposes the confinement of three women by their companions: the jealousy, the denigration, the insults, the following, the threats, the social and family life which disappears, the beatings.

“They’re not entirely bad.”these men, she also writes. If we pressed them “to extract juice”we would find behind “a poisonous bitterness” something that would “an aftertaste of sweetness”. In short, there is nothing extraordinary about them. Extraordinary violence is perfectly ordinary and a violent man can also be gentle.

(Un)deliver the victims’ story

One is a mason. The other is a driver. The third writes. All are appreciated by those around them. Praised for their talent, their work, their courage, they are friendly. Nothing brings them together, however, and that is what makes this prologue necessary. By briefly unfolding their lives, the narrator locks them up “in an imaginary room from which they cannot escape”: his view, ours on these three men and their violence. Her power as a novelist: in turn, she imprisons them and then, only then, can she (un)deliver to us the story of their victims.

She, first of all, who lived under the influence of a man for several years.

Chahine Daoud then. She was murdered in 2021 by her husband in Mérignac. He burned her alive.

Emma, ​​finally, her cousin, killed by her husband in Mauritius in 2000. He drove over her several times.

To the last two, she pays homage by reweaving the thread of their lives. Playful, open, joyful women, who gradually lose their smile or keep it out of social convenience and to hide their progressive imprisonment. Women who hope and forgive despite insults and blows, to protect children too.

We can’t imagine

In this book, Nathacha Appanah is both a novelist and a journalist. Chahinez’s ordeal is the subject of a long investigation, between press cuttings, interviews, site visits. Emma’s is also accompanied by family introspection because, after dying under the wheels of her husband, Emma is suspected of having been a “light” woman. Wasn’t he really right to be jealous? Hence a second death, that of the shameful silence of the family, which continues for years later.

The writer says nothing, blames nothing. She questions, puts things back in order and, bringing these two women back to life without any fuss, gives them smiles and dignity. Do them justice. By writing most often in the present tense, she chooses to bring them to life and tells us that these dramas do not belong to the past; they perpetuate themselves.

In the first story, the one taken from her life as a young woman, the style is more personal. She then frees herself from a form of journalistic distance to deliver a more gripping text, torn by fear and suffering. The night when her companion tried to kill her is thus evoked in a striking manner. Dry, impactful sentences follow one another, in jerks, like so many blows. Three words, two, just one. He is extraordinarily calm.

“I want to write his master’s degree in this moment. All his movements are measured and controlled. His strength is devoted to one thing at a time. Open the door grille. Catch me. Hold me still. Calm me down by giving me quick, sharp, hard slaps. Grab my head. Press it. (…) On the straights, press the accelerator fully. Decelerate. Turn off the engine and headlights. Light a cigarette. Talk. Restart. Say “You will see”. Say “I warned you”. Say “It’s your fault”.”

She is in panic. Hunted, disoriented, she doesn’t know where she’s going or what’s happening.

“I want to write about my disintegration in this moment. My movements are rapid, abrupt, I run, I fall, I stumble, my legs are like cotton, my legs are heavy. I’m standing still, playing dead and suddenly I rush outside. I run but aimlessly, constantly looking behind me. I don’t think. My brain no longer works. I should take a side road but I stay on the road. I should be screaming for help outside But I’m doing it in a car with the windows rolled up, in a car going at high speed. I should hit him with a stone but I don’t think about hitting him, I don’t think about all those stones under my bare feet.”

These lines are confusing and disorienting. Is she running in a field? Is she in a car? Is she running? Is she frozen? Is she defending herself? Did he get out of his car or behind the wheel? Reading them, we no longer really know what is happening, where she is going, what she is going through. Rarely has fear panic been so perfectly transcribed. All the more terrifying as the predator’s calm is absolute. The journalistic distance or neutrality, but also the respect she observes towards Emma and Chahinez, no longer exist here. It’s a visceral fear that guides the words.

The intensity of this night then highlights what his text brutally says: “You have to be inside a violent home to understand the specific codes and laws. The violent home is a world apart and those who are not there say phrases such as: Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t she tell anyone? Why didn’t she go to the police? Why did she get back with him?»

Because asking ourselves these questions, from the outside, is quite simply saying that we cannot imagine.