Offenses (Paperback)

Constance Debre

ISBN 10: 163590272X / ISBN 13: 9781635902723

Published by Semiotext (E), 2026

About this Item

Paperback. An account of flawed justice, based on the true story of a murder in a housing project outside Paris.He is guilty, yes. He is guilty of having yielded, of not allowing himself to be crushed. He is guilty of not having been reasonable, of not having stayed in his place, the one that was his. To have disturbed the order of thingsTen stab wounds. An old woman in a pool of blood. A nineteen-year-old neighbor now a murderer.Since publishing her first novel in 2018, Constance Debres work has exposed the flaws in the social order with dizzying passion and intelligence. Her first-person trilogyPlayboy, Love Me Tender, and Namedescribes the trajectory of leaving a comfortable bourgeois life as mother and wife employed as a criminal justice attorney to become a writer and lesbian. Her books radically challenge all received ideas of the couple, motherhood, family, and inheritance.In Offenses, Debre trains her sights on a single case of inevitably flawed justice that, like hundreds of others like it, reveals the enmeshed culpabilities of the perpetrator, the victim, the place, and the past. In a housing project adjacent to Paris, an unemployed teenager kills his elderly neighbor in order to pay off a drug debt of 450. Writing with impassioned detachment, Debre uses forensic detail to explore the ambient senselessness behind this senseless crime.There is a geography, Debre writes. We live in a vertical world, you dont see. A world made of worlds. Not side by side but set concentrically and upon one another. A bit like Middle Age representations of the universe, a bit like Dantes circles of hell. Each world only communicating with the worlds directly in contact with it and none of the others.In Offenses, Debre scathingly describes the misery of poverty and the absence of any horizon beyond. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781635902723

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Offenses (Paperback)
• Publisher: Semiotext (E)
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 163590272X
• ISBN 13: 9781635902723
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

An account of flawed justice, based on the true story of a murder in a housing project outside Paris.

He is guilty, yes. He is guilty of having yielded, of not allowing himself to be crushed. He is guilty of not having been reasonable, of not having stayed in his place, the one that was his. To have disturbed the order of things…

Ten stab wounds. An old woman in a pool of blood. A nineteen-year-old neighbor now a murderer.

Since publishing her first novel in 2018, Constance Debré’s work has exposed the flaws in the social order with dizzying passion and intelligence. Her first-person trilogy—Playboy, Love Me Tender, and Name—describes the trajectory of leaving a comfortable bourgeois life as mother and wife employed as a criminal justice attorney to become a writer and lesbian. Her books radically challenge all received ideas of the couple, motherhood, family, and inheritance.

In Offenses, Debré trains her sights on a single case of inevitably flawed justice that, like hundreds of others like it, reveals the enmeshed culpabilities of the perpetrator, the victim, the place, and the past. In a housing project adjacent to Paris, an unemployed teenager kills his elderly neighbor in order to pay off a drug debt of €450. Writing with impassioned detachment, Debré uses forensic detail to explore the ambient senselessness behind this senseless crime.

There is a geography, Debré writes. We live in a vertical world, you don’t see. A world made of worlds. Not side by side but set concentrically and upon one another. A bit like Middle Age representations of the universe, a bit like Dante’s circles of hell. Each world only communicating with the worlds directly in contact with it and none of the others.

In Offenses, Debré scathingly describes the misery of poverty and the absence of any horizon beyond.

About the Author

Constance Debré was born in 1972. She is the author of four novels, all published in English translation by Semiotext(e): Love Me Tender (2022), Playboy (2024), Name (2025), and Offenses (2026).