Description

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

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

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

Edouard’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… Edouard 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 Edouard Louis

‘I feel so lucky to be living and writing at the same time as Edouard 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

Publisher Review

What Edouard Louis has to say is so urgent that I buy all his books as soon as they’re out in French. I am so glad that English-speakers can now access his latest departure through Tash Aw’s new translation. COLLAPSE unites Louis’s trademark sociological sharpness with a new and quite terrifying psychological depth, giving us a life at once overdetermined and touched by something darker, more elusive. He has never been tenderer, more sophisticated, or more fully on form. — Naoise Dolan Edouard Louis surely belongs to that vital group of writers, amongst the likes of Cusk, Rankine and Ernaux, who have revitalised and reinvented their own form in a relentless pursuit of the truth — Andrew McMillan Spare, raw – and quite unforgettably moving. Edouard Louis is someone who makes writing matter — Neil Bartlett Full of writing that is both rigorously controlled and profoundly shaken, Collapse is a bracing, pulverising book. It burns with white-hot truth, the sort that illuminates even as it incinerates — Colin Walsh