Live Fast: A Novel

Winner of the Prix Goncourt 

A powerful autobiographical novel of loss, an unforgettable memoir of grief, and the small decisions that define the course of fate.

Paced and structured with the inevitable suspense of a countdown, Brigitte Giraud’s tense and haunting work of literary fiction follows one woman’s relentless quest to comprehend the motorcycle accident that took the life of her partner Claude at age 41.

The narrator of Live Fast recounts the chain of events that led up to the fateful accident, tracing the tiny, maddening twists of fate that might have prevented its tragic outcome. Each chapter asks the rhetorical question, “what if,” departing from an image or memory from early years in Algeria during the war, to moving to the suburbs of Lyon, buying and renovating a home where they could “put down their suitcase for a whole life.” A sensitive elegy to her husband and a subtle, precise vision of a lasting love, Live Fast is a moving and electrifying portrait of love and loss, reminding us that living itself can be dangerous.

Brigitte Giraud is a French writer and novelist and the author of fourteen books. She received the 2022 Prix Goncourt for Live Fast, which was also a big bestseller in France. Live Fast is her first book to be published in English.