Irish publisher Bullaun Press has won the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses with the book There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert.

There’s a Monster Behind the Door is a “rollicking, sardonic picaresque”, said judge Houman Barekat. “The novel has important things to say about colonialism and society, but it’s also tremendous fun – darkly funny, acerbic, energetic.”

The novel, which is also longlisted for this year’s International Booker prize, is set in the 1980s on the French overseas department of Réunion Island, where Bélem was born. The book is “a compact, comic tour-de-force”, said judge Jude Cook. “It interrogates postcolonial legacies, domestic abuse and a young girl’s rite of passage into adulthood with the lightest of touches.”

There’s a Monster Behind the Door is Bélem’s first of two novels. The French edition won the Grand Prix du Roman Métis and the Prix André Dubreuil du Premier Roman. Bélem also teaches secondary school students and works as an associate judge in a juvenile court.

Her “tragi-comedy novel disrupts the tired trope of the trauma novel and is equally brutal in its critique of postcolonial narratives”, said judge Alice Jolly. “The writing is lively, supple and vigorous. The work of the translators who have brought this book to English-speaking audiences must also be celebrated.”

The book’s publisher, Bullaun Press, was set up in 2021 by Bridget Farrell to focus on literature in translation. The press’s name comes from the Irish word for a stone with a manmade hollow that holds water at its centre, bullán. “Many bullauns around the country are traditionally associated with magical, healing or holy properties,” reads the publisher’s website.

Shortlisted alongside the winning book were Invisible Dogs by Charles Boyle, published by CB Editions; How to Leave the World by Marouane Bakhti, translated by Lara Vergnaud and published by Divided Publishing; Célina by Catherine Axelrad, translated by Philip Terry, published by Les Fugitives; and Mother Naked by Glen James Brown, published by Peninsula Press.

All longlisted presses received £500 each. Shortlisted presses were awarded an additional £1,000 each, with 70% going to the press and 30% to the writer and translator.

The prize was set up to celebrate small presses based in the UK and Ireland. Previous winners include Fitzcarraldo Editions for Counternarratives by John Keene and Influx Press for Attrib. and other stories by Eley Williams. In 2024, Charco Press was named winner with Of Cattle and Men by Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia, translated by Zoë Perry.