An autobiographical novel from Édouard Louis hailed as one of the most important voices of his
generation--about social class transformation and the perils of leaving the past behind.
One question took center stage in my life it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every
moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this revenge by what means? I tried
everything. Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty discrimination and violence in
his working-class hometown--so he sets out for school in Amiens and later 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. At once harrowing and profound Change is not just a personal odyssey a
story of dreams and of "the beautiful violence of being torn away " but a vividly rendered
portrait of a society divided by class power and inequality.
