Lullaby (Slimani novel)
French novel
Lullaby (French: Chanson douce, lit. 'Sweet song'; published as The Perfect Nanny in the United States) is a 2016 novel by French author Leïla Slimani.
Plot
Myriam and Paul, two young professionals living in Paris, hire a nanny to take care of their children. The nanny, Louise, excels at her job and makes an extraordinary impression on the family. But over time Louise's mental state unravels and she murders the couple's two children.
The book was inspired by the real-life 2012 murder of children by their nanny in New York.
Background
Lullaby is Slimani's second novel and the first to be translated into English. By January 2018 it had been translated into 18 languages, with intentions for a further 17. Originally titled Chanson douce, it was translated as Lullaby for the UK and The Perfect Nanny in the US.
It sold 600,000 copies in France in its first year of publication.
Publication history
Chanson douce. France: Éditions Gallimard.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lullaby (Slimani novel)” as french novel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as french novel. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27685158. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2012 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lullaby (Slimani novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.