Cover art for The Other Girl
Published
Seven Stories Press, October 2025
ISBN
9781644214879
Format
Softcover, 96 pages
Dimensions
21cm × 14cm

The Other Girl

Not yet released
Due October 7, 2025.
Fast $7.95 flat-rate shipping!
Only pay $7.95 per order within Australia, including end-to-end parcel tracking.
100% encrypted and secure
We adhere to industry best practice and never store credit card details.
Talk to real people
Contact us seven days a week – our staff are here to help.

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Annie Ernaux's profound investigation into the life of her mysterious older sister, who died at six, two years before Annie was born.

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Annie Ernaux's profound investigation into the life of her mysterious older sister, who died at six, two years before Annie was born.

In the summer of 1950, when Annie Ernaux is ten, she inadvertently learns she had a sister who died at six, two years before her own birth. Having believed she was an only child, she learns that she has replaced another daughter-"the little saint," "the absent one in every conversation," who lives on in Annie's parents' wordless grief.

Taking the form of a letter to the unknown sister, The Other Girl was published in French in 2011 as part of the Affranchis collection (published by les editions du Nil), which invited writers to compose "the letter they'd never written," inspired by Kafka's Letter to His Father. "I had to come to terms with this mysterious inconsistency- you, the good girl, were not saved, but I, the demon, survived. More than survived, was miraculously saved. So you had to die at six for me to come into the world and be saved."

The Other Girl by the 2022 Nobel Laureate appears now for the first time in an English language version, adding a necessary and wondrous piece to the great and ongoing puzzle that is the oeuvre of one of our greatest living writers, Annie Ernaux.

Related books