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by Nicolas Mathieu
Winner of the 2018 Prix Goncourt, this poignant coming-of-age tale captures the distinct feeling of summer in a region left behind by global progress.
August 1992. One afternoon during a heatwave in a desolate valley somewhere in eastern France, with its dormant blast furnaces and its lake, fourteen-year-old Anthony and his cousin decide to steal a canoe to explore the famous nude beach across the water. The trip ultimately takes Anthony to his first love and a summer that will determine everything that happens afterward.
Nicolas Mathieu conjures up a valley, an era, and the political journey of a young generation that has to forge its own path in a dying world. Four summers and four defining moments, from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to the 1998 World Cup, encapsulate the hectic lives of the inhabitants of a France far removed from the centers of globalization, torn between decency and rage.
"[S]tunning [and] bittersweet...Mathieu's subtle craft will enrapture readers and appeal to fans of Édouard Louis." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mathieu captures the vulnerability and awkwardness of adolescence with painful acuity…A gritty, expansive coming-of-age novel filled with sex and violence that manages to be tender, even wryly hopeful." - Kirkus Reviews
"A portrait of teenagers growing up in a forgotten, hopeless region of France in the 1990s...Mathieu's book has been acclaimed in France for shining a light on a forgotten part of the country...[he has] received domestic acclaim and international attention for writing about working-class youth." - New York Times
"As anguished as it is elegiac, as universal as it is grounded in the vivid particularities of its setting—1990s Rust Belt France—And Their Children After Them evokes the beautiful, miserable, longing-plagued experience of being an adolescent as pointedly and powerfully as any novel published since The Virgin Suicides." - Adam Levin, author of Bubblegum and The Instructions
This information about And Their Children After Them was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nicolas Mathieu was born in Épinal, France, in 1978. His first novel, Aux animaux la guerre, was published in 2014 and adapted for television by Alain Tasma in 2018. He received the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, in 2018 for his second novel, And Their Children After Them. He lives in Nancy.
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