About the work
“Bevor ich es vergesse” is the German edition of “Avant que j'oublie” (“Before I Forget”), the autobiographically inspired debut novel by French writer Anne Pauly (born 1974). The original was published by Verdier in August 2019, and Amelie Thoma's German translation followed from Luchterhand in 2024. The material reached the stage on 8 October 2025 at the Münchner Kammerspiele, where actress Wiebke Puls created the adaptation, directed it and performs it as a solo.
Plot
After her father's death, the narrator Anne and her brother deal with the funeral and paperwork and empty the crammed family house in Carrières-sous-Poissy. As she sorts through what he left behind, her father emerges in all his contradictions: a one-legged man of modest origins, a drinker capable of violence, and at the same time a self-taught devotee of Eastern spirituality. Only an old letter from a childhood friend of her father's opens up a new view of his fragile life.
Cultural significance
The novel won the Prix Envoyé par la Poste in 2019 and the Prix du Livre Inter in 2020, when the jury chaired by Philippe Lançon chose it with 17 of 24 votes; before that it had appeared on the selections of several major autumn prizes, including the Goncourt, Femina and Médicis. Deutschlandfunk Kultur noted how the book combines grief and wit without tipping into sentimentality. In 2026 it was also published in English as “Before I Forget”.