‘A deeply affecting account of mothers and daughters, youth and age, and dreams and reality’ Kirkus Reviews

On her mother’s death, Annie Ernaux travels back in time to reunite Mother and Daughter, writing both movingly and quixotically ‘to capture the real woman, the one who existed independently from me, born on the outskirts of a small Normandy town, and who died in the geriatric ward of a hospital in the suburbs of Paris’.

In this powerful and poignant tribute – reissued a quarter of a century after Quartet Books first published the book in English – Ernaux writes: ‘I believe I am writing about my mother because it is my turn to bring her into the world.’