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THE FIRST NOVEL BY NICOLAS MATHIEU, WINNER OF THE 2018 PRIX GONCOURT
Nicolas Mathieu’s gripping first novel is the story of a world that has come to an end. With a girl, a gun and acres of snow.
When a factory that employs most of a small town is scheduled to close – to the despair of the workers and disdain of the overlords – things start to fall apart. The disenfranchised factory workers have nothing left to lose. Martel, the trade union rep with innumerable tattoos and Bruce, the body-builder addicted to steroids resort to desperate measures. A bungled kidnapping on the streets of Strasbourg goes horribly wrong and they find themselves falling prey to the machinations of the criminal underworld.
“[An] uncompromising portrait of a working class eaten up by the frustration and resentment of having been abandoned, and sinking into alcoholism and racism”. — Paris Match
Nicolas Mathieu’s gripping first novel is the story of a world that has come to an end. With a girl, a gun and acres of snow.
When a factory that employs most of a small town is scheduled to close – to the despair of the workers and disdain of the overlords – things start to fall apart. The disenfranchised factory workers have nothing left to lose. Martel, the trade union rep with innumerable tattoos and Bruce, the body-builder addicted to steroids resort to desperate measures. A bungled kidnapping on the streets of Strasbourg goes horribly wrong and they find themselves falling prey to the machinations of the criminal underworld.
“[An] uncompromising portrait of a working class eaten up by the frustration and resentment of having been abandoned, and sinking into alcoholism and racism”. — Paris Match
Reviews
PRAISE FOR AND THEIR CHILDREN AFTER THEM: 'Deeply felt . . . An exceptional portrait of youth
[A] page-turner of a novel . . . I couldn't put the book down
Mathieu won France's prestigious Goncourt prize for this absorbing Nineties narrative set in a French valley community left stranded by the decline of industry . . . a multi-viewpoint panorama of thwarted aspirations, spiced with breathy sex scenes and nostalgic detail
And Their Children After Them finds space for beauty, for tenderness, for hope . . . you might think of a Ken Loach movie with a soundtrack by Bruce Springsteen . . . an elegiac anthem
The plot, involving drug dealing and simmering violence . . . keeps you turning the pages.
Before Nicolas Mathieu won the Prix Goncourt in 2018 for And Their Children After Them he wrote this remarkable novel about two small-town scallies who resort to crime when the local factory closes down . . . Mathieu, a wonderful writer, echoes the grittiness and compassion of Émile Zola in Germinal
There are several intersecting stories in this bleakly uncompromising portrait of working-class life in the Vosges . . . this tale of helpless, resentful people with nothing to lose is powerful and compelling.
Award-winning novelist Nicolas Mathieu portrays how the destruction of working-class communities has fed cynicism and despair.
