Little Liar

This sharp, compelling legal drama from an acclaimed French journalist explores why a teenage victim lied about her rape and how the disadvantaged become scapegoats.

At 15, Lisa was a typical teenager, at times rebellious and impulsive, adjusting to newfound attention from boys and men. But when her demeanor takes a sudden turn, her teachers suspect something worse than adolescent moodiness. Lisa eventually confesses that she’s been abused, multiple times, and suspicion quickly falls on Marco, a worker who had done projects at her parents’ house. With his troubled history of drinking, unemployment, and casual sex, he’s sentenced without hesitation to 10 years in prison.

While others consider the matter settled and want to move on, guilt eats away at Lisa. No longer a minor, she drops her family’s hotshot Parisian lawyer ahead of the appeal hearing and makes a surprise visit to the office of a local attorney, Alice. Unassuming yet dogged in seeking justice, Alice agrees to represent her, and bring to light the painful truths obscured by Lisa’s past lies.

Drawing on years of experience covering trials, Pascale Robert-Diard combines keen insight and a vivid, powerful writing style in this story at the intersection of the #MeToo movement and class inequality.

Pascale Robert-Diard joined Le Monde in 1986 as a political journalist, and since 2002 she has worked as a legal columnist for the newspaper. The Little Liar was short-listed for France’s most prestigious literary award, the Goncourt Prize, and is being translated into six languages.

Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than ninety books, including Marc Petitjean’s The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris and Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly and Eléctrico W, winner of the French-American Foundation’s 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction. She lives in Kent, England.