Excerpt from Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I stood up and left Bruce in the woods. I walked and walked, I kept my head down, I didn't look at the early-morning streets, I didn't look at the sky, I didn't look at the sea, I walked all the way here, I waited by the gate and the cop opened it to me. I said I've killed a boy up there in the woods near Lake Dziani. The pistol's in my rucksack and the cop looked at me like he'd seen a ghost. At the desk I gave them precise directions and they put me in here. In this cell.

The edges of the bench are rough and graze the back of my knees. These little abrasions are nothing much, but for me, who's known nights in the open, bare-fisted fights, chases through the woods, the fire of a knife across my face, my toes nibbled by rats, hunger, solitude, fear, real fear I mean, the kind that makes you shit yourself, for me today, having just killed a human being, these little abrasions are unbearable.

I shift in the hope of finding a place where the edge of the bench is smooth but no, it's like that all the way along. It's as if all the people who've been here before me had picked away at this concrete bench with their fingernails. Fingernails bursting with rage and despair.

I get up and go to sit on the ground. Maybe it's all passed out of me now, the despair, the fury, the violence, the feelings that gnaw at you from inside and drive you to pick away at a concrete bench, aim great kicks at the door, kill, or bang your head against the wall like that guy was doing who was here earlier.

He was here when I came in. He said nothing, he simply moved along to the end of the bench, keeping his head down. His pants made a little scraping sound against the concrete. He smelled of grass, of earth, of rain and wind, as if he were nature itself. It was very strange. As for me, I hadn't washed for I don't know how many days and I'd killed someone that morning. Do you have a particular smell when you become a killer? I stopped looking at him, in any case there'd be no point in sussing him out, noticing what he wore, or how he wore it, the shape of his head or anything else. I didn't greet him, I didn't ask him why are you here. What point would there be in knowing where he was from, what his name was or that kind of thing. Maybe it's better like that, no more speaking, no more seeing, no more knowing.

Hardly had I sat down and felt the first bite from the bench when that guy stood up. He began moving forward slowly, really slowly, he took a small step, sliding one flip-flop along the ground and bringing the other one up beside it, waited for I don't know what, then began again with another little sliding step and stopped again. I watched his strange maneuvers with fascination. Was he crazy? Was he having visions like the ones I'd been having during these past few weeks? When he got to the end, he arranged his flip-flops carefully so that they were neatly lined up side by side and all at once began banging his head against the wall with incredible speed. Boom boom boom. Stupidly, it took me several seconds to react, I wasn't expecting that guy to do such a thing, and for a moment, I thought I didn't want to have anything to do with that kind of misery, yet all the same I stood up and pulled the man backward while calling out for help.

He fell back limply into my arms without struggling, like a dead bird, as if that was all he'd been waiting for. His clothes were soft and of good quality and that whole earth smell of his filled my head completely. Two policemen came in and took him away, saying Monsieur! Monsieur! Wake up, Monsieur!

Bolts groaned, latches clicked, keys turned. A moment later a vehicle drove off outside. Soon he'd be in the hospital. In the firm, knowledgeable hands of doctors, with the soothing words of a nurse who'd come to see him at regular intervals, in that clean, odorless linen he'd have to wear, his head would be x-rayed, the white sheets on which he'd lie down, the painkillers, the antidepressants, the antidotes to death, the sleep into which he'd fall heavily with arms outstretched. A sweet respite which would last for several days until he returned here: to this cell.

Excerpt from Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah copyright © 2016 by Editions Gallimard; English language translation copyright © 2018 by Geoffrey Strachan. Reproduced with the permission of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.