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.

‘A perfect strike: funny, emotional, political, and unflinchingly accurate.’ – Virginie Despentes

'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

'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

Translator bio
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.

Author bio
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.

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Ada d’Adamo is mother to Daria. Their days are absorbed by caregiving and routine. Daria’s profound needs remained undetected in pregnancy, and with her birth, Ada’s world is remade.

As a dancer she must use her physicality in new ways, to keep her daughter safe. As a writer she must find a language to communicate beyond words. And when, on the cusp of her fifties, Ada herself becomes gravely ill, she takes the most courageous decision of all: to leave Daria their story.

This is Gravity, a journey of isolation, anger and sometimes despair, through moments of joy and exquisite tenderness, towards a love stronger than life.

'A magnificent book. A wonderful dialogue between a mother and a daughter... A story like this belongs to everyone. It's a gift: in these cases we say thank you, and we smile.' La Repubblica Concita de Gregorio

'A book about pain is successful when it is also a book full of happiness. And when you read the first page, you understand that Come d'aira is a book that radiates happiness.' Corriere della Sera Paolo di Stefano

Translator bio
Alex Valente (he/him) is a bisexual bilingual Britalian on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ land. He can be found in tiny writing on the credits page of books, when publishers remember to name the translator.

Author bio
Ada d’Adamo was an essayist and poet from Italy. After giving birth to her disabled daughter Aria, d’Adamo became an advocate for people with disabilities and for interabled families. While working on a memoir for her daughter, she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She passed away on the 1st of April 2023. Three months later her memoir, Gravity, won the Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary award.

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Croatia, autumn 2022. The tourist season has ended, and Split settles into an uneasy quiet. Ines works the reception desk of a seaside hotel. Her mother, Katja, a cleaner, keeps the family afloat and cares for Ines and her younger brother, Mario. When Inspector Zvone is called to an abandoned factory on the city’s edge, he finds the body of seventeen-year-old Viktorija, daughter of a respected local doctor. The murder shocks the community and sends ripples through the lives of Ines, Katja, and Zvone—each forced to confront truths they would rather keep buried. As suspicion deepens and loyalties fracture, Mother of Sorrows becomes a devastating exploration of love, guilt, and denial. With quiet ferocity, it confronts us with a haunting question: what are we willing to sacrifice to protect those we love—and what are the consequences when we do?

“Mother of Sorrows,” translated from the Croatian by Matt Robinson, is told in short chapters from its various characters’ points of view. The story is a police procedural with benefits: an investigatory chronicle that explores issues of free will and fate (“there was something toxic and corrupting in their blood,” Ines thinks of her family) against a backdrop of consumerist glamour and moral decay — The Wall Street Journal

Translator bio
Matt Robinson (1978) is a former Reuters foreign correspondent. He translates books by Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian writers, including the works of the award-winning Croatian crime writer Jurica Pavičić.

Author bio
Jurica Pavičić (1965) is a Croatian novelist, screenwriter, short-story writer and journalist. His crime novel Red Water (published in Croatian in 2017 and in English in 2025) won ‘Le Point’ award and ‘Grand prix de la littérature policière’’ for the best European crime novel in 2021. The Sunday Times named the English edition of Red Water 'Best Crime Novel 2025'.

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