And Their Children After Them

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.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"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