The Loneliest Band in France

Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Colorado Book Awards 2020 Coups de Cœur, The American Library in Paris Book Awards ​Winner of the 2019 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, selected by Rita Bulwinkel Mistaking an ad to join the titular The Loneliest Band in France for one to sell his blood, Migara de Silva, the novella’s narrator — a Sri Lankan student, new to Montpellier — finds himself, instead, under the sway of the band, drinking heavily and being recruited to play a battle-of-the-bands-esque concert (that night) at the local Café Bovary with its four members: Noël, Guy, Lucien, and Michel. Not only is there prize money attached to the concert, the bandmates also see this as an opportunity to debut a new song, one, they claim, that can hurt — even kill — its listeners.