Returning to Reims

'There was a question that had come to trouble me a bit earlier, once I had taken the first steps on this return journey to Reims . . . Why, when I have had such an intense experience of forms of shame related to class, shame in relation to the milieu in which I grew up, why, when once I had arrived in Paris and started meeting people from such different class backgrounds, I would often find myself lying about my class origins... why had it never occurred to me to take up...
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'There was a question that had come to trouble me a bit earlier, once I had taken the first steps on this return journey to Reims . . .

Why, when I have had such an intense experience of forms of shame related to class, shame in relation to the milieu in which I grew up, why, when once I had arrived in Paris and started meeting people from such different class backgrounds, I would often find myself lying about my class origins... why had it never occurred to me to take up this problem in a book?'

Returning to Reimsis a breath-taking memoir of return, a family story of class, sexuality, gender and of the shifting political allegiances of the French working classes. A phenomenon in France and a huge bestseller in Germany, Didier Eribon has written the defining memoir of our times.

Translated by Michael Lucey.