Change
A Novel
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
The major new novel from the once-in-a-generation author of The End of Eddy
'One of the most important, politically vital and morally bracing writers of his generation’ Kieran Goddard, Guardian
‘Change fills me with admiration and inspiration, as well as renewed faith in writing itself’ Maggie Nelson
‘One of the major writers of our time' Garth Greenwell
‘A mesmeric novel’ Daily Mail
Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination and violence in his working-class hometown - so he sets out to study in Amiens, and, later, at university in Paris. He sheds the provincial 'Eddy' for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug dealers alike.
Everything he does is motivated by a single obsession: to become someone else. Change is at once a personal odyssey, a story of dreams, friendship and the perils of leaving the past behind, and a profound portrait of a society divided by class, inequality and power.
Translated by John Lambert
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Louis (The End of Eddy) returns with another scorching autobiographical novel, this time drawing on his efforts to break out of isolation and poverty. Eddy Bellegueule (Louis's birth name) grows up in a rural French village rife with racial tension and violence, where his family often has to beg for food. At 14, a drama teacher encourages him to apply to a lycée in Amiens, 30 kilometers away, and he jumps at the chance. At the new school, he befriends a classmate named Elena, who invites him to meals at her family home. There, Eddy learns about cinema and literature and "how not to eat like a peasant." His "new life" allows Édouard—as he renames himself—to "take revenge on childhood" by striving to become a successful author like his mentor Didier, who encourages him to write. He also gets a leg up from a wealthy older man he meets in a bar, who helps him get into an elite Parisian école and pays to have his teeth fixed. Édouard calls his project of transformation a "permanent obsession," as he regularly feels like an imposter and worries he'll fail at school and have to return home. Having worked as an escort in Amiens and Paris, he expresses a singular view about the trade ("In making love with a man I rejected all the values of my milieu, I became bourgeois"). With frank prose and staggering insights, Louis makes the story of his metamorphosis feel vital and alive. This is irresistible.
