At age ten, Annie Ernaux overhears a conversation that was not meant for her ears. She had believed that she was her parents’ only child, but there was another daughter who had died of diphtheria at the age of six. Her existence, name, and photographs were kept silent so that Annie would not be exposed to the sorrow of a child’s death. This novel is a letter to the sister she never knew. The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French writer Annie Ernaux in 2022.

Naomi Morgan is an award-winning translator, mainly of French plays. In 2025, she was awarded the Kyknet-Fiësta for Best Translation of a Text for Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. She has already translated three novellas by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, which were also adapted for the stage and has translated works by two Nobel Prize winners, with Annie Ernaux’s work being the second. Morgan is a Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic and a research fellow at the University of the Free State.