The Only Happiness

In this intimate book, Nicolas Mathieu evokes with accuracy, emotion and restraint his experience of becoming a father — a happiness inseparable from fear and pain.

 

“I think back to all those hours in the maternity ward, you’re in my arms, I don’t know how to hold you or wash you. I look at you and when my finger brushes over your nose, your eyes close and it’s perfect.” / “It’s just the two of us and I’m terrified you might fall or stop breathing… and when you sleep, I make you promises I will never keep.”

- A beautiful book with a cloth spine to share with all fathers, both young and old.
- A cross-over appeal: at once a high-quality children’s picture book and a coffee-table gift book for adults.

 

 

THE AUTHOR

Nicolas Mathieu, winner of the 2018 Prix Goncourt, delivers a powerful text playing with the inflections of spoken language, as if whispered, released in a single breath: a text to be read and reread aloud!

 

 

THE ILLUSTRATOR

Illustrated with humour and tenderness by Benjamin Chaud, a renowned illustrator shortlisted several times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, winner of the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators in New York in 2015.