Before I Forget

Before I Forget

by Anne Pauly

£12.99

‘A perfect strike: funny, emotional, political, and unflinchingly accurate.’ – Virginie Despentes, author of Vernon Subutex and King Kong Theory

When Anne’s father dies, she is left grieving a contradiction. Jean-Pierre was a man of many faces: the self-taught philosopher born into poverty; the Buddhist who marked favourite haikus with maple leaves; the old romantic who ends every evening kissing a pixelated portrait of his late wife; and the violent bully, whose alcoholism marks his family’s life in terrible ways. Sorting through his belongings and making funeral preparations, Anne tries to come to terms with who and what she’s lost.

Told with a quick wit and deep tenderness, Before I Forget is a tragicomic portrait of loss and a novel for anyone who’s ever loved a so-called monster.

Translated from the French by Dina Leifer

144pp, paperback with flaps, £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-916806-16-0
Publication date: 29 September 2026

Press & Reviews

'A perfect strike: funny, emotional, political, and unflinchingly accurate.' – Virginie Despentes, author of Vernon Subutex and King Kong Theory

'There is a gorgeous tumbling present in these pages, a kind of slipperiness that presents itself in all the same ways we experience grief: pain and pleasure, joy and desperation. Before I Forget is a lovely ode to memory and trauma, but it's also a reminder that we hold so much love inside us that we can't help but inevitably leak and spill. Admirably brilliant work.' – Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things

'Before I Forget... beautifully describes the claustrophobia and messiness of the grieving process... It’s darkly witty, so moving and can’t fail to stay with you.'– Service95

'A modest, beautiful tribute to death... From a subject that could descend into miserabilism, Anne Pauly produces a beautiful novel with burlesque moments.’– Elisabeth Philippe, L'Obs

'Humour and pain are always intertwined in this book, often in the same sentence.' – Oonagh Devitt Tremblay, Fallow

'Revealing to us the things she feels unable to say to those around her, Pauly establishes herself as a strikingly sardonic new voice in French literature, and Liefer as a talented translator attuned to the complexity of human grief.' – Helen Vassallo, The Conversation

'A novel of understated delicacy.' – La Figaro

'Sharp and musical.’ – Vanity Fair

About The Book

Author

Anne Pauly is a writer working and living in Paris. Her first book, Avant que j'oublie, was awarded the 2020 Prix du Livre Inter and Prix Robert Walser, and was shortlisted for the Prix Femina, Prix Wepler, and Prix Goncourt. Anne has since written short stories for several reviews, a televised series, and a play. She is currently finishing a second novel, while working on a play for the Théâtre du Nord along with seven other writers, including Virginie Despentes, Paul B. Preciado, and Julien Delmaire.

Translator

Dina Leifer is a London-based translator and writer. She switched career from journalism to translation in 2015 after gaining an MA in Translating Popular Culture. Dina’s first picture book, And Eddie Had an Egg, was published by Green Bean Books in 2025 after she won the 2023 UK Jewish Children’s Book Award. She won Stevns Translation Prize in 2025, and Before I Forget is her first translation of adult fiction.

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