Jean Fanchette’s poems often treat the subject of exile from a distant homeland and dwelling in a metropole that confers outsider status. Filled with murmurs, dimly lit landscapes, and seaside expanses, his verse grasps at receding memories through sensory detail.
Hassan Melehy has succeeded in a translation that is as poetic as it is worldly: Jean Fanchette’s poetry is reinvented in English by Melehy to bring the reader its exilic, oceanic, archipelagiac consciousness while at the same time highlighting its dedication to, and play with, form that are deeply aware of the history of French poetics. —Anjali Prabhu, Edward Said Chair in Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles
Fanchette celebrates a “life embraced / As a perspective of escapes and returns.” These lines suggest that exile, that indelible watchword in Fanchette’s work, has more than a negative valence; errancy is “embraced” and welcomed. He remains “Open to the wind that comes from elsewhere.” So is his translator Hassan Melehy, who demonstrates exquisite sensitivity to the vocabulary of Fanchette’s Mauritian landscapes. —Alexander Dickow, author of The Distance, and You In It
Originally from New England, Hassan Melehy lived all over the USA before settling in North Carolina in 2004, where he lives with his wife, Dorothea Heitsch. His first poetry collection, A Modest Apocalypse, was published by Eyewear in 2017. In addition to his creative writing he has written three books of criticism, most recently Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory (Bloomsbury, 2016). He has translated works of criticism, philosophy, and social science from French, including Jacques Rancière’s The Names of History (University of Minnesota Press, 1994). He teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Born on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, Jean Fanchette (1932–92) was a psychiatrist, writer, and editor who spent his adult life in Paris. While still in medical school he won several French national poetry prizes. In 1959, with the support of Anaïs Nin, he founded the French-English bilingual review Two Cities, which featured the work of many future notables, including Michel Deguy, Lawrence Durrell, and Octavio Paz. Under the Two Cities imprint, Fanchette published Minutes to Go (1959), the first “cut-up” experiments of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Sinclair Beiles, and Gregory Corso. In his region of origin Fanchette is highly celebrated: every two years since 1992, the Jean Fanchette Prize has been awarded to a writer from the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, Réunion, Madagascar, the Comoros, and Seychelles.
![Red Moon is a novel teeming with enigmas, mysteries, and curiosities, including the symbolic meanings of gemstones found beside the murderer’s victims. The crimson moon and full moons that feature throughout the story carry profound significance. As Margarita Landi once told Nieves Herrero, “If a full moon has a red halo, a crime will be committed that night.” This chilling statement sets the tone for the novel and questions the link between full moons and criminal minds. “The story has all the ingredients to keep you glued to the book’s pages. There won’t be just one crime, but multiple. There won’t be just one sole suspect, and throughout the plot, we will logically deduce who it is and arm ourselves for the investigation. There won’t be just one red moon. I invite you to read this novel published by Ediciones B in 2024. We will keep discovering that books shouldn’t be boxed in by a trend, or have an expiry date.” (https://pasionpais.net/cultura/luna-roja-en-el-cielo-de-nieves-herrero/) The full sample for Red Moon is available here - https://alannahpurslow.websitesfortranslators.dev/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/RED-MOON-SAMPLE.pdf For rights information, please contact: Sofia Di Capita (sofia@antoniakerrigan.com) Translator bio Alannah Purslow is a Spanish and French literary translator based in Wales. She graduated from her M.Phil in Literary Translation (Trinity College, Dublin) in Spring 2025. Her debut translation, Fast Cars, was released last September (Welbeck Children's Books, Hachette Children’s Group, 2025). She is a storyteller at heart, intrigued by how our relationships and life experiences are interconnected to how we perceive and create art. Author bio Nieves Herrero (1957 -) was born in Madrid. She has a degree in Journalism from Madrid’s Universidad Complutense and a Law degree from Universidad Europea, with an addition year of study in the Criminology Department of the Universidad Camilo José Cela. She has spent decades working a journalist in the press, radio and television and her media trajectory has been recognised as one of the most award-winning in the profession. She is the author of the best sellers Lo que escondían sus ojos [What Her Eyes Concealed] (2013, La Esfera de los Libros), the TV adaption of which beat audience records and won an Ondas award; Como si no hubiera un mañana [As If There Was No Tomorrow] won a Premio de la Crítica de Madrid [Madrid Critic’s Award] in 2015, Carmen (2017, La Esfera de los Libros), which stayed on the best-seller list for sixty weeks and was one of Spain’s highest selling historical fiction books as well as being the only authorised biography of Carmen Franco; Esos Días Azules [Those Blue Days] (2019), El joyero de la reina [The Queen’s Jeweller] (2022) unanimously loved by critics and public alike. La Baronesa [The Baroness] (2023) was also a resounding editorial success. Passionate about good stories and crime novels, Nieves Herrero continues her literary canon, praised by tens of thousands of readers, with Luna roja [Red Moon] (2024).](https://translatorsaloud.com/wp-content/plugins/youtube-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png)