Collapse

The unflinching story of Édouard Louis’s brother’s violent life and death.

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

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