An extract from A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson
The story of an intense friendship between the narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders
The story of an intense friendship between the narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders
Hailed in Le Point as a ‘masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance’, A Leopard-Skin Hat may be Anne Serre’s most moving novel yet.
A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Serre poignantly depicts the bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel.
Written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s little sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell, written in Anne Serre’s signature style.
A Leopard-Skin Hat was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025, announced on April 8 2025.
Anne Serre
About the Author
Born in Bordeaux, Anne Serre is the author of 17 works of fiction
Mark Hutchinson
About the Translator
Mark Hutchinson was born in London and lives in ParisPeter Serafinowicz reads from A Leopard-Skin Hat
A deeply romantic yet platonic love story between the narrator and his complicated childhood friend
— The 2025 judges on A Leopard-Skin Hat
What the judges said
Anne Serre’s short novel is the deeply romantic telling of a platonic love story between the narrator and his complicated childhood friend, Fanny; a story so beautifully realised – and translated so sensitively by Mark Hutchinson – that the pair become part of the life of the reader. A perfectly balanced book, slender in size but bearing significant weight all the way through, A Leopard-Skin Hat is testament to the ways in which we continue to hold the people we love in our memories, with respect and dignity, after they die.
What the critics said
Meghan Racklin, The Brooklyn Rail
‘The story of Fanny and the Narrator is a story about our impulse to understand one another and about the way in which unknowability is what makes someone interesting; it is about, in fact, the relationship between unknowability and the desire to know, neither existing without the other.’
The Baffler
‘Serre’s primary subject, as always, is narration, and it’s thanks to this obsession that A Leopard-Skin Hat sidesteps memoir, not only by replacing siblings with friends and adopting a male Narrator but by plunging into the volatile spacetime of writing.’
Publisher’s Weekly
‘Serre’s novel memorably evokes the slippery nature of Fanny’s character in its snapshot-like structure: rather than a more conventional and chronological arc, the story progresses along the winding routes of the Narrator’s ruminations. Readers will be moved by this probing story about the unknowability of others.’
Anne Serre on A Leopard-Skin Hat
‘My book tells the story of an intense, difficult friendship between the Narrator, so called (he has no other name) and his childhood friend, Fanny. The narrator, as the name suggests, spends his life telling stories. Fanny meanwhile suffers from serious mental problems. I wrote the book after the suicide of my younger sister, at the age of 43, with whom I had an intense bond. I wanted to create a memorial to her, one that was as beautiful as possible.’
Read the full interview here.
Mark Hutchinson on A Leopard-Skin Hat
‘Anne is a close friend of mine, so I read all of her books as they first appear, in French. When I’m translating, I do a quick mot-à-mot of the whole thing, and then work it up from there –the whole book each time, over and over, until I have an accurate English facsimile of the French. Once everything is in place, I do what I call the varnishing – that is, I go back over it as many times as is necessary, sentence by sentence, listening to it as a piece of English, buffing and polishing and gathering up any slack. There are always six or seven sentences in a book which you despair of finding an exact equivalent for; these I usually leave for the end. I forget how long I spent on A Leopard-Skin Hat; about four months, I think. The trickiest part was the description of Fanny’s Ascension in the final chapter.’
Read the full interview here.
