New book from Sophie Buchaillard Signed

Honno is excited to announce that we have signed Sophie Buchaillard’s next novel Assimilation, one family's story set against the backdrop of some of the biggest political and humanitarian events of the century.

A tale of unravelling family secrets, belonging, betrayal and inherited trauma, Assimilation will transport readers in time and place through one family’s history and struggle.

Charlotte, young and fiercely independent, desperately needs to escape the confines of her mother, Marianne’s expectations and a dreadful trauma. She leaves France and arrives in Wales, hoping to find peace and somewhere to rebuild her life.

Marianne, a mother with a colourful past, keeping a terrible secret, tries her best to conform to French middle class expectations.

In this stunning new novel, Buchaillard takes us on an adventure pursuing spies, drug dealers and even a talking bear.

"Beautifully written, stunningly observed. A vivid and confronting book.”
Rebecca Parfitt - Commissioning Editor, Honno

Sophie Buchaillard is a Franco-British novelist, essayist and critic who has lived in South Wales for the past twenty-three years, after travelling and living extensively abroad.

Originally trained as a political scientist, she worked as a campaigner and a strategist, and co-authored Talented Women for a Successful Wales, a report on improving gender parity in Wales’s education and business sectors. In 2019, Sophie left it all behind to follow her passion for writing. After completing an MA in Creative Writing, she published her debut novel This Is Not Who We Are (Seren, 2022, Shortlisted for Welsh Book of the Year 2023). Now a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she teaches creative writing at Cardiff University and in a variety of community settings, whilst finishing a PhD. Her short stories and essays are widely published. Assimilation is her second novel.

Assimilation will land on shelves in February 2024.