A lonely young woman works as an announcer in Paris’s Gare du Nord, surrounded by people yet separate from them. Obsessed with a man who loves another, she suffers alone as she waits for him. In her solitude, she wanders the streets of the modern city, playing on the edge of danger, seeking connection. Her interactions with strangers create a confrontation between the intimate and the anonymous, revealing to her man’s most human desires.

Just thirty, debut literary novelist Céline Curiol has the ability to write, with great psychological tension, about the innermost depth of her characters, with all their contradictions, impulses, and humanity. She captures an existential and witty vision of our contemporary world.

Voice Over was recently published in the author’s native France to great acclaim, and rights have been sold in fourteen countries. The novel appears now for the first time in English.

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“Not only is it the finest first novel I have read in many years, but it is, quite simply, one of the most original and brilliantly executed works of fiction by any contemporary writer I know of.”
— Paul Auster

“With an extraordinary sense of the mechanisms of love and the empathy of a saint for the human race, Céline Curiol gives us the most original and the best new book of the year.”
— Marie Claire

“It is not just the lover’s obsession that keeps our attention . . . it is more a young woman’s rapport with the city, with Paris . . . and all the unexpected encounters we can make there.”
— Le Monde des livres

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Céline Curiol is a journalist who has worked for various French media, including Libération, Radio France, and BBC Afrique. Her second novel, Permission, has recently been published in France. Originally from Lyon, France, Curiol lives in New York City, where she is at work on her third novel.

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