LIFE OLD AGE AND DEATH OF A WORKING CLASS WOMAN (HB)

When Didier Eribon’s mother began to lose her physical and cognitive autonomy, the author and his brothers were compelled to place her in a nursing home, despite their misgivings. A few weeks later, she died. Tracing his mother’s rapid decline – and drawing on works by Simone de Beauvoir, Norbert Elias, Annie Ernaux and Michel Foucault, among others – Eribon offers an honest and wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between ageing, gender and class, transmuting his own rage, sadness and shame into a strikingly nuanced portrait of the most overlooked human experience.