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A tender and wistfully satirical novel about the desire to change your life by bestselling French author David Foenkinos
"Foenkinos's surreal yet relatable novel…considers life in our age of anxiety, when other people's picture-perfect lives make our own seem drab in comparison." -Washington Post
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wants to be someone else.
Eric Kherson-40, divorced, distracted-is spiraling. He has devoted his life to a successful career as the marketing director of a leading sports brand. But when family disaster rocks him to his core, he finds himself adrift from his family and questioning all his choices.
That is, until an acquaintance from his schooldays offers him a high-powered government position. Desperate for escape, he throws himself into her enigmatic world of high-risk deals and endless networking, doing anything it takes to get a contract signed.
But on a business trip to Seoul, Eric starts feeling worse than ever. Wandering the city's streets, he comes across Happy Life, a store that offers its customers something that could change their lives: a fake funeral. Happy Life will write your eulogy, arrange the flowers, and allow you to lie inside your own coffin. Why? They believe the experience will help you reinvent yourself.
But above all for Eric, Happy Life sparks a business venture of his own that might do just that…
A celebrated French bestseller, Happy Life is a life-affirming story of hope and recovery, perfect for fans of Matt Haig and Nathan Hill. David Foenkinos is a novelist, screenwriter and director. He is the author of fourteen novels that have been translated into forty languages. Several of his works have been adapted for film, including Delicacy (2011). The Mystery of Henri Pick (2020) was published in collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents, and Second Best was adapted for a major UK stage production in 2025. He received the 2014 Prix Renaudot and Prix Goncourt des Lycéens for Charlotte.
Sam Taylor is an award-winning literary translator and novelist. He has translated more than 60 books from the French, including Laurent Binet's HHhH and Leïla Slimani's The Perfect Nanny. 1
Eric Kherson was afraid of flying. He usually slept quite badly the night before a trip, his mind frantically catastrophizing, picturing everything he would leave behind after his violent death in a plane crash. But in the endless human battle between urges and fears, desire always wins out over fear.
2
Amelie Mortiers, the new chief of staff to the secretary of state for Foreign Trade, needed to recruit a team. As soon as she started work, in May 2017, she targeted Eric as one of her first hires. The people around her were surprised by this left-field choice. They expected her to go for one of the more experienced candidates suggested by headhunters, but Amelie preferred to call upon a former schoolfriend. And yet she and Eric had lost touch completely after the years they spent together in Rennes. Only when Magali Desmoulins came up with the idea of cre- ating a Facebook group for former Chateaubriand students in February 2017 did the two of them get back in touch. And while there may appear to be something a little pathetic about such nostalgic endeavours,1 most of the people involved were thrilled. Of course, they looked through each others' profiles, eager to compare their former classmates' lives with theirs, because other people's failures always offer some consolation for our own. So it was that Amelie Mortiers came across the relatively inactive page belonging to Eric Kherson. There were no personal details listed at all, only a few comments about his career at Decathlon.
Eric had joined the French sporting goods retailer as a mere sales assistant before rising, over the course of twenty years, to become the organization's commercial director. Whenever he was looking a bit tired, people would quote Decathlon's slogan to him: 'So?
"Foenkinos's surreal yet relatable novel…considers life in our age of anxiety, when other people's picture-perfect lives make our own seem drab in comparison." -Washington Post
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wants to be someone else.
Eric Kherson-40, divorced, distracted-is spiraling. He has devoted his life to a successful career as the marketing director of a leading sports brand. But when family disaster rocks him to his core, he finds himself adrift from his family and questioning all his choices.
That is, until an acquaintance from his schooldays offers him a high-powered government position. Desperate for escape, he throws himself into her enigmatic world of high-risk deals and endless networking, doing anything it takes to get a contract signed.
But on a business trip to Seoul, Eric starts feeling worse than ever. Wandering the city's streets, he comes across Happy Life, a store that offers its customers something that could change their lives: a fake funeral. Happy Life will write your eulogy, arrange the flowers, and allow you to lie inside your own coffin. Why? They believe the experience will help you reinvent yourself.
But above all for Eric, Happy Life sparks a business venture of his own that might do just that…
A celebrated French bestseller, Happy Life is a life-affirming story of hope and recovery, perfect for fans of Matt Haig and Nathan Hill. David Foenkinos is a novelist, screenwriter and director. He is the author of fourteen novels that have been translated into forty languages. Several of his works have been adapted for film, including Delicacy (2011). The Mystery of Henri Pick (2020) was published in collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents, and Second Best was adapted for a major UK stage production in 2025. He received the 2014 Prix Renaudot and Prix Goncourt des Lycéens for Charlotte.
Sam Taylor is an award-winning literary translator and novelist. He has translated more than 60 books from the French, including Laurent Binet's HHhH and Leïla Slimani's The Perfect Nanny. 1
Eric Kherson was afraid of flying. He usually slept quite badly the night before a trip, his mind frantically catastrophizing, picturing everything he would leave behind after his violent death in a plane crash. But in the endless human battle between urges and fears, desire always wins out over fear.
2
Amelie Mortiers, the new chief of staff to the secretary of state for Foreign Trade, needed to recruit a team. As soon as she started work, in May 2017, she targeted Eric as one of her first hires. The people around her were surprised by this left-field choice. They expected her to go for one of the more experienced candidates suggested by headhunters, but Amelie preferred to call upon a former schoolfriend. And yet she and Eric had lost touch completely after the years they spent together in Rennes. Only when Magali Desmoulins came up with the idea of cre- ating a Facebook group for former Chateaubriand students in February 2017 did the two of them get back in touch. And while there may appear to be something a little pathetic about such nostalgic endeavours,1 most of the people involved were thrilled. Of course, they looked through each others' profiles, eager to compare their former classmates' lives with theirs, because other people's failures always offer some consolation for our own. So it was that Amelie Mortiers came across the relatively inactive page belonging to Eric Kherson. There were no personal details listed at all, only a few comments about his career at Decathlon.
Eric had joined the French sporting goods retailer as a mere sales assistant before rising, over the course of twenty years, to become the organization's commercial director. Whenever he was looking a bit tired, people would quote Decathlon's slogan to him: 'So?