The social class is back. But before this nostalgic term was brought back to Germany, French intellectuals and sociologists such as Édouard Louis, Didier Eribon and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie rediscovered the class phenomenon. Already in his debut novel The End of Eddy, Édouard Louis, who grew up in a working-class milieu in the French provinces, tells of everyday violence, social injustice and exclusion based on his own life story.

With his book Die Freiheit einer Frau (Combats et métamorphose d'une femme), Louis gives a voice to his mother, Monique Bellegueule, who grew up in precarious circumstances without a higher education and trapped in marriages with violent and alcoholic men. He traces her life story up to the present day while at the same time, reflecting on his emotionally distanced relationship with his mother. And so it is not just his mother who undergoes a metamorphosis, he does too, which gradually allows them to get closer again. When she finally leaves her second husband, she leaves her village and moves to Paris. The son, meanwhile socially advanced and part of intellectual life in France, admires that she has the strength and energy to change and finally lead the self-determined life she had secretly longed for. What counts in the end is the courage to start a different life, despite the socio-political difficulties, despite the social class.