A Woman's Battles and Transformations

Combats et M彋amorphoses d'une Femme is a fictional portrait of the author's mother by the acclaimed writer of the international bestsellers The End of Eddy and History of Violence.

Late one night, 丼ouard Louis got a call from his forty-five-year-old mother: "I did it. I left your father."

Her entire life had been shaped by poverty and masculine violence. She got pregnant at sixteen, dropped out of high school, and married her first husband, a violent alcoholic who terrorized her. Then, she met the man who would become 丼ouard's father, thinking that this time, it would be different. She loved him, and suddenly, he changed--he became the same as other men. He got drunk and disappeared for days. He prohibited her from working or wearing makeup. She was with him for two decades. And suddenly, she was free.

This is the searing and sympathetic story of one woman's liberation: of mothers and sons, of history and heartbreak, of politics and power. It reckons with the cruel systems that govern our lives--and with the possibility of escape. Sharp, short, and fine as a needle, it is a necessary addition to the work of 丼ouard Louis, "one of France's most widely read and internationally successful novelists" (The New York Times Magazine).