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Collapse
  • Published: 16 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781787305038
  • Imprint: Harvill
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $39.99

Collapse

Formats & editions
Hardback
16 June 2026
EBook
4 June 2026
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In a vivid, tender and uncompromising novel of male violence and destruction, once-in-a-generation writer Édouard Louis looks back on the life and death of his deeply troubled older brother

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.
  • Published: 16 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781787305038
  • Imprint: Harvill
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $39.99
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About the author

Edouard Louis

Édouard Louis is the author of The End of Eddy, History of Violence, Who Killed My Father, A Woman's Battles and Transformations, Change, Monique Escapes and Collapse, and the editor of a book on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, making him one of the most celebrated writers of his generation worldwide.
portrait photo of Edouard Louis

Also by Edouard Louis

Monique Escapes
Change
A Woman’s Battles and Transformations
Who Killed My Father
History of Violence
The End of Eddy
See all

Praise for Collapse

What Édouard 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