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.

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

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

‘Bracing, pulverising... burns with white-hot truth’ COLIN WALSH

‘Spare, raw... Édouard Louis is someone who makes writing matter’ NEIL BARTLETT

‘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

Praise for Édouard Louis

‘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

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