I often hated my brother, but I have to understand his life.

From ‘one of the most important, politically vital and morally bracing writers of his generation’ GUARDIAN

An unflinching account of Édouard Louis’s brother’s life and death.

‘France’s biggest literary sensation’ NEW YORK TIMES

Édouard’s brother spends much of his life dreaming. He lives in a poor, working-class world, where he imagines that he will become one of the finest butchers in France, that he will travel, that he will make his fortune, that he will restore cathedrals, that he will earn his father’s love.

But his reality allows none of this. There is no way to escape, no one who can show him how, and everything about him – his drinking, his violence, his behaviour with women and with others – condemns him.

At thirty-eight he is found dead on the floor of his small studio apartment. This book is the story of his collapse.

Translated by Tash Aw

‘I feel so lucky to be living and writing at the same time as Édouard Louis’ MAGGIE NELSON

‘One of the major writers of our time’ GARTH GREENWELL

‘Édouard Louis is a master of the poetics of juxtaposition, elucidating the hostile and the intimate, the murky and the pure, the vulnerable and the resilient’ YIYUN LI

Édouard Louis (Author)
Édouard Louis is the author of The End of Eddy, History of Violence, Who Killed My Father, A Woman's Battles and Transformations, Change, Monique Escapes and Collapse, and the editor of a book on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, making him one of the most celebrated writers of his generation worldwide.

Tash Aw (Translator)
Tash Aw was born in Taiwan and is the author of five novels, three of which have been longlisted for the Booker Prize including his most recent novel, The South. His work has won the Whitbread First Novel Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and an O. Henry Award, and has been translated into over twenty languages. His translation of Édouard Louis' A Woman's Battles and Transformations was shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize.