A Woman’’s Battles and Transformations

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Barrios Book in Translation Prize

A Woman’s Battles and Transformations is a 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, Édouard Louis got a call from his forty-five-year-old mother: ＂I did it. I left your father.＂ 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 Édouard Louis, ＂one of France’s most widely read and internationally successful novelists＂ (The New York Times Magazine).

Édouard Louis is the author of the international bestsellers The End of Eddy and History of Violence as well as the nonfiction book Who Killed My Father. Compared to Jean Genet by The Paris Review, his work deals with sexuality, class, and violence. Louis was born Eddy Bellegeule in the working-class village of Hallencourt in northern France, and he attended the École Normale Supérieure and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.