Divided Publishing

How to Leave the World

£ 11.99
£ 11.99

How to Leave the World(trans. Lara Vergnaud)Marouane Bakhti

£ 11.99

How to Leave the World

trans. Lara Vergnaud

Marouane Bakhti

A rare book that depicts the isolation and poetry of rural life.

Annie Ernaux

Everyone is asking about his identity. Gay? Muslim? French? Moroccan? Instead of choosing a side, he writes a book. A book about the forest and the city, Paris and Tangiers, shame and forgiveness, dating apps and spiritual discovery. A book about growing up as a diaspora kid in rural France, with desires that want to emerge at any cost. Told in mesmerising prose, How to Leave the World is a beautiful non-answer.

Long-listed for the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize

  • 978-1-7395161-3-0
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 112 p.
  • Paperback
  • September 2024

About the author

Marouane Bakhti is a writer and arts journalist. Born in Nantes, France to a Moroccan father and a French mother, he studied history and journalism at the Sorbonne. He writes criticism for Mouvement magazine and lives in Paris. How to Leave the World is his first novel.

Photo: Manuel Braun

About the translator

Lara Vergnaud is a literary translator of French and has translated over a dozen novels, including works by Zahia Rahmani, Fatima Daas, Mohamed Leftah and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Lara was born in Tunisia, grew up in the United States and currently lives in southern France.

Endorsements (3)

Visceral scenes and fragments of shame, desire and displacement crystallise as sentences that are felt before they are understood. Bakhti writes diaspora as distension, a condition of freezing and unfreezing through successive intimacies and encounters: ‘Voice, silence, voice, silence.’ What it takes to imagine social and physical freedom is what it meant to keep reading this incredible book.

Bhanu Kapil

I was struck by its kaleidoscopic scope, despite its brevity – from the earthy and vital imagery of Bakhti’s childhood, through the transformational effects of grief and faith. A beautiful book!

Rose Cleary

This is an astonishingly good debut book. I was immediately drawn in and adored the beautifully crafted prose. With sensitivity and nuance, Marouane Bakhti explores the complexities of family and cultural identity as a member of the Moroccan diaspora – and one who happens to be coming to terms with his sexuality. There is so much heart in this story, you can’t help but feel like it was a privilege to have been taken on this journey. Marouane Bakhti is without doubt a promising new writer and I am excited to see what he does next.

Elias Jahshan, editor, This Arab Is Queer

Press (6)

Corduroy Against NylonRomilly SchulteEra Journal, 19, Winter 2024712/2024
Forest's October Recommendation ...Forest GreenwayBurley Fisher Books Instagram06/10/2024
In conversation: Marouane Bakhti & Lara VergnaudMarouane Bakhti and Lara VergnaudLondon Review Bookshop Blog26/09/2024

Darryl

£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK
£ 11.99
Buy in Europe UK

DarrylJackie Ess

£ 11.99

Darryl

Jackie Ess

Underneath the sharp satire and hilarious sexual irreverence this is a deadly serious book: a brilliant novel of a seeker, like The Pilgrim’s Progress refracted by queer internet culture.

Torrey Peters

Darryl Cook is a cuckold, and that’s exactly how he likes it. He has an inheritance that spares him from work, a manageable and seemingly consequence-free drug habit, and a lovely wife called Mindy who’s generally game for anything—and for as much of it as she can get. But after an accidental overdose and some serious oversharing, Darryl’s world begins to crack up. Tormented by what seems to be the secret truth in sex, and less assured of that secret’s form, Darryl steps into what used to be called real life . . . Darryl is a disarmingly funny and unabashedly intelligent look at a community of people parsing masculinity, marriage, sex (and love) on their own terms.

  • 978-1-7395161-7-8
  • 21.6 x 13.9 cm
  • 200 p.
  • Paperback
  • February 2025

Endorsements (4)

Darryl crashes through the pieties of inclusive literature like a horny aurochs through an Apple Store. Jackie Ess’s vicious wit and humane soul refuse to settle for anything less than an enhanced interrogation of human frailty, here through the psychosexual evisceration of an ordinary, relatable guy who simply wants someone else to bang his wife. Who doesn’t? This book takes the raw power of the sentence seriously, which is the best way to be funny: Darryl is sprinting ahead of the reader, mooning, with knowledge they crave, and we must try our hardest to catch up. I was already breathless by page ten, my gut torn in half by horrified glee. I stayed awake all night reading and couldn’t work the next day. Jackie Ess is the best. Cuck rights!

Harry Josephine Giles

One of the best novels on the planet.

Kay Gabriel

Ess is what I might call a burgeoning cult literary figure, armed with an unmistakable lyric deadpan and a taste for provocative subject matter.

Stephen Ira, Poetry Project

What Darryl is looking for is a crisis of sufficient severity that it will cause him to feel real to himself.

Dominic Fox, Review 31