Разве это не потому, что вы используете recovery = True?
restore - попытаться разобрать поврежденный XML
Я изменил recovery = False и получаю:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "./foo.py", line 11, in <module>
parse(b'<broken<') # prints b'<broken/>'
File "./foo.py", line 7, in parse
elem = etree.parse(BytesIO(xml), parser)
File "src/lxml/etree.pyx", line 3435, in lxml.etree.parse
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 1857, in lxml.etree._parseDocument
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 1877, in lxml.etree._parseMemoryDocument
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 1765, in lxml.etree._parseDoc
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 1127, in lxml.etree._BaseParser._parseDoc
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 601, in lxml.etree._ParserContext._handleParseResultDoc
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 711, in lxml.etree._handleParseResult
File "src/lxml/parser.pxi", line 640, in lxml.etree._raiseParseError
File "<string>", line 1
lxml.etree.XMLSyntaxError: error parsing attribute name, line 1, column 8
Я что-то упустил?