A tour de force of a novel—blazingly original—and a visceral portrait of a young woman questioning the social order, from one of France’s most important and prize-winning writers.

In The Forces, a young woman sets off on a journey. What follows is a wild dive into the depths of human experience – through formative childhood memories to the streets of an unnamed city; from an underworld of bars, dens, cults, and screens to the solace of nature. Every turn illuminates the forces that form our daily lives – the invisible structures at work on our language, our bodies, our beliefs, our labor, our desires.

At once philosophical and playful, and written in prose that feels in motion on the page, THE FORCES is a modern-day odyssey: a book about life and lifeforce, about how to be and how to stay alive in a world where violence and tenderness collide endlessly. It is a novel unlike any other – one that challenges our vision of the world, and changes our perception of what fiction can do. It is a generation-defining novel from one of our most fearless writers.