Of Fangs and Talons

Before Nicolas Mathieu won the Prix Goncourt in 2018 for And Their Children After Them he wrote this remarkable novel about two small-town scallies who resort to crime when the local factory closes down … Mathieu, a wonderful writer, echoes the grittiness and compassion of Émile Zola in Germinal * Sunday Times *There are several intersecting stories in this bleakly uncompromising portrait of working-class life in the Vosges … this tale of helpless, resentful people with nothing to lose is powerful and compelling. – Laura Wilson * Guardian *Award-winning novelist Nicolas Mathieu portrays how the destruction of working-class communities has fed cynicism and despair. – Conrad Landin * Jacobin Magazine *A first novel of rare power * Le Figaro Littéraire *Nicolas Mathieu has written one of the best crime novels of the year * Le Monde *

Nicolas Mathieu was born in 1978 in Epinal, a small town in north-eastern France. After studying history and cinema, he moved to Paris, where he worked variously as a scriptwriter, a news editor, a private tutor, and a temp at City Hall. His first novel, Of Fangs and Talons, won the Erckmann-Chatrian prize, the Transfuge prize and the critics’ award at the Prix Mystere. His second novel, And Their Children After Them, was published to universal acclaim in 2018 and won various prizes including the most coveted prize in France, the Prix Goncourt. He lives in Nancy.