> Skip to content
Play sample
  • Published: 7 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781473597853
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

A Woman’s Battles and Transformations





A counterpoint to Who Killed My Father: a tender, radically personal-political account of Édouard Louis's mother's life

Édouard Louis is one of the most important literary voices of his generation' Guardian

One day, Édouard Louis finds a photograph of his mother from twenty years ago: a happy young woman, full of hopes and dreams. But growing up, Édouard only knew his mother's sadness - what happened in those years since the photo was taken? Then, at the age of forty-five, Édouard's mother frees herself from this oppression, to start a new life in Paris.

A Woman's Battles and Transformations reckons with the cruel systems that govern our lives - and with the possibility of escape. It is a tender portrait of a mother, and an honouring of her self-discovery as she chooses to live on her own terms.


'Tash Aw's sensitive translation captures the vividness of Louis's voice... Movingly, the book demonstrates the pain that moving from one social class to another entails' Times Literary Supplement

'A tenderness of observation' New York Times

'Incandescent...Louis's most hopeful book to date' Los Angeles Times

Translated from the French by Tash Aw

  • Published: 7 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781473597853
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

About the author

Edouard Louis

Édouard Louis is the author of two novels and the editor of a book on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian and Freeman’s. His first two novels, The End of Eddy and History of Violence, were translated into thirty languages, and have made him one of the most celebrated writers of his generation.

Also by Edouard Louis

See all
penguin pop image
penguin pop image