A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides
A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides
by Gisèle Pelicot; translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver
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About the Book
“A rousing feminist manifesto.” – The New York Times Book Review “Staggering . . . a lyrical book about monstrous events, a compelling exploration of what it feels like to hold two existences in your brain at once.” – Washington Post
“Deeply vulnerable.” – USA Today
The sexual assault that stunned the world. A courageous woman’s rallying call for shame to “change sides.” For the very first time, Gisèle Pelicot tells her story.
In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot waived her right to anonymity in her legal fight against her ex-husband and the fifty men accused of sexually assaulting her, a courageous decision that inspired millions of people around the world. Only four years prior, Gisèle had made the shattering discovery that her partner, Dominique Pelicot, had been secretly drugging and raping her, and inviting strangers to also abuse her in their home for nearly a decade. “Shame must change sides,” Gisèle bravely declared at the opening of the trial in Avignon, France, and the dictum soon became an international rallying cry to radically transform public sentiment and legislation surrounding cases of sexual violence. By the time Dominique and the dozens of men accused were found guilty three and a half months later, Gisèle had become a global figure, and her message—that she and other victims of sexual abuse have no reason to feel ashamed—galvanized a movement that triggered protests and demonstrations around the world.
In A Hymn to Life, Gisèle tells her story for the very first time, not as victim, but as witness. Beginning in 2020, when she received the first phone call from a local police station, Gisèle recounts the fateful investigation that turned her life inside out. With unwavering honesty and devastating grace, she retraces the steps of a life built over the course of five decades, the final decade of her marriage and its hidden abuse, and the long path of emotional healing that ensues. As Gisèle transcends the unfathomable traumas of her past, against all odds, she emerges with a renewed sense of passion and reverence for her life. Part memoir, part act of defiance, A Hymn to Life is a moving story of survival, testimony, and courage, and an unforgettable portrait of a woman who broke her silence, reclaimed her voice, and forced a reckoning.
About the Author
Gisèle Pelicot was named as the most noteworthy person of 2024 in an opinion poll in France, eclipsing world leaders, and was honored by Time. To mark International Women’s Day, The Independent named her the most influential woman of 2025. She was recently awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest civic honor.
Editorial Reviews
“Gisèle Pelicot’s new memoir, A Hymn to Life, is a reminder of organized narrative’s simple power . . . Replete with details of modest domesticity in modern France, A Hymn to Life is also a rousing feminist manifesto . . . It seeks a proper transfer of shame from sex-crime victims to their perpetrators, and the perpetrators’ enablers.” —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review
“Staggering . . . A lyrical book about monstrous events, a compelling exploration of what it feels like to hold two existences in your brain at once . . . There is only whatever you do to put one foot in front of the other. There is only what it takes to survive.” —Monica Hesse, The Washington Post
“A Hymn to Life is an astonishing book—unflinchingly honest, open to self-interrogation, evocative, determined . . . Pelicot’s honesty is breathtaking, and it helps make A Hymn to Life all the more revelatory as a sociological document.” —Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic
“A work of sophisticated integration: Pelicot shifts between the ongoing investigation and her memories of childhood, youth, and married life. The two tracks regularly converge as she pauses to consider a distant memory in light of her new knowledge. Pelicot’s account of the marriage must inevitably be a story about her own misjudgment. She takes possession of this devastating central fact with calm authority, her narrative voice a fitting counterpart to her much-noted composure at the trial. ‘Beyond the pain of the revelations and the shame of my body being turned into a sack,’ she writes, ‘there was also the shame of having understood nothing.’” —Elaine Blair, The New York Review of Books
“Deeply vulnerable . . . It’s all told from the vantage point of a woman trying to make sense of her life in the face of devastation, sometimes grasping for signs that only hindsight can uncover . . . Yet for all the monstrousness revealed in Pelicot’s story, her steadfast courage and optimism that she will persevere acts as a buoy, reeling the reader back with her own sense of hope for the future when, many times, her retellings of her abusers’ cruelty turn unbearable.” —USA Today
“Searing, unforgettable, and strangely beautiful . . . A Hymn to Life challenges preconceived notions of ‘appropriate’ responses to both sexual violence and disbelief. It tells the story of how a woman held two opposing truths in her hands—the peaceful existence she led by day and the horrifying violence she was unknowingly subjected to by night—in order to piece her shattered life back together in the face of one of the most heinous sexual-abuse cases in modern history.” —Air Mail
“A heartrending and courageous account of the ultimate betrayal.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“Vibrates with necessity . . . A Hymn to Life is novelistic and resounds with grace. The language is precise and vivid; the story reverberates with echoes and patterns. It is an extraordinary achievement to write a book this controlled while confronting complication and contradiction . . . Pelicot recounts a lifetime with all its longing and pain. There is beauty, love, hope. And there is rage, loss and fear of the void beneath her feet . . . Many could be enriched by this alertly human account of 70 years of life. Here is a perspective that is full, candid and instructive.” —Financial Times