Monique Escapes

When Édouard's mother reveals she is--not for the first time--enduring an abusive relationship, mother and son plot her next steps in what is at once an edge-of-the-seat escape narrative and a meditation on freedom and renewal.

Late one night, Édouard receives a telephone call from his mother. In tears, she tells him that her partner, her first since her abusive marriage with Édouard's father, has been insulting, degrading, and humiliating her. I thought this would be a new life for me and now it's starting all over.

From afar, in Athens, Édouard swiftly sets a plan in place for Monique; the next morning, she departs the apartment she has been sharing with the man. What takes shape over the next weeks, over phone calls and informal Internet tutorials, on video chats and train rides, is a powerful and transformative shared experience for mother and son as they navigate the aftermath of male brutality, confront the limitations of class and society, and lay bare the pain of their past. With characteristic insight into society's underpinnings and oversights, and with exquisite and tender portraiture, Édouard Louis's Monique Escapes is a profound story of a woman, a mother, and a family's search for more.

Author: Édouard Louis
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 06/02/2026
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.53h x 5.72w x 0.61d
ISBN: 9780374616809


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2026
Publishers Weekly 04/27/2026

About the Author
Édouard Louis is the author of The End of Eddy, History of Violence, Who Killed My Father, A Woman's Battles and Transformations, Change, and Collapse, and the editor of a book on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Freeman's. His books have been translated into thirty languages and have made him one of the most celebrated writers of his generation worldwide. He lives in Paris.