The major new novel from the once-in-a-generation author of The End of Eddy

'One of the most important, politically vital and morally bracing writers of his generation' Keiran Goddard, Guardian

'Change fills me with admiration and inspiration, as well as renewed faith in writing itself' Maggie Nelson

'One of the major writers of our time' Garth Greenwell

'I read everything he writes' Esi Edugyan

'A mesmeric novel' Daily Mail

Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination and violence in his working-class hometown - so he sets out to study in Amiens, and, later, at 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. Change is at once a personal odyssey, a story of dreams, friendship and the perils of leaving the past behind, and a profound portrait of a society divided by class, inequality and power.

Translated by John Lambert