Collapse

I often hated my brother, but I have to understand his life. The unflinching story of Édouard Louis’s brother’s violent life and death.

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

‘Louis has never been tenderer, more sophisticated, or more fully on form’ NAOISE DOLAN

‘Belongs to that vital group of writers, amongst the likes of Cusk, Rankine and Ernaux, who have revitalised and reinvented their own form’ ANDREW McMILLAN