Poetic, tender, joyous.
Guardian
Heartbreaking... You suspect this uniquely troubling writer is far from done yet.
Observer
Louis' project, at once aesthetic and political, is..."to create a new language for the left", capable of articulating contemporary working-class experience.
New Statesman
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... translated into English with unobtrusive flair by Tash Aw.
New York Times
The key to Louis's literary appeal is that he engages with complex themes while keeping things relatively simple. His elegant concision [...] ensures that candour never lapses into self-indulgence.
The Spectator
Penetrating . . .Louis delivers an incisive portrait of the ways oppression and social forces brought chaos to their lives, and how they found freedom through compassion.
Publishers Weekly
Louis's intimate narrative creates a pathway to understanding the complex, symbiotic nature between systems of power...Louis is in service to those overlooked by the privileged and an excellent role model for how men can become better allies to women.
The Brooklyn Rail
In his incandescent autofiction, Édouard Louis has remade his painful youth as literature...Louis' most hopeful book to date.
Los Angeles Times
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 life of oppression, to start a new one 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