A Hymn to Life

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 inspired and moved millions of people with her astonishing courage and dignity as she chose to waive her right to anonymity in her legal fight against her husband and the 50 men accused of her sexual assault. Gisèle Pelicot's call for shame to change sides in cases of sexual abuse, and the power of the messages she has sent out to the world, have generated an extraordinary public response and moved both women and men all over the world.

Gisèle Pelicot (Author)
Gisèle Pelicot was named as the most noteworthy person of 2024 in an opinion poll in France, eclipsing world leaders, and honoured by Time magazine. To mark International Women's Day, The Independent named her the most influential woman of 2025. She was recently awarded the Legion of Honour, France's highest civic honour.
Natasha Lehrer (Translator)
Natasha Lehrer is a prize-winning writer, translator and editor. Her long form journalism and book reviews have appeared in the Guardian, Observer, Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and Fantastic Man, among others. She has contributed to several books, including a chapter on France in Looking for an Enemy, edited by Jo Glanville. The writers she has translated include Neige Sinno, Nathalie Léger, Chantal Thomas, Vanessa Springora, Amin Maalouf, Victor Segalen, Robert Desnos and Georges Bataille. Her translations have been shortlisted and longlisted for several translation prizes, and she won the 2016 Scott Moncrieff prize for Suite for Barbara Loden.
Ruth Diver (Translator)
Ruth Diver is an award-winning literary translator and the former head of comparative literature at the University of Auckland, where she also taught French and Russian. She is the author of Enfant Russes, Écrivains Français, and has published research on translingual authors in Roman 20-50, Europe and Revue des lettres modernes. She won the Asymptote Close Approximations Fiction Prize in 2016 for her translation of Maraudes by Sophie Pujas and has since published over a dozen full-length translations, including The Little Girl on the Ice Floe by Adélaïde Bon (shortlisted for the UK Translators Association Debut Translation Prize) and A History of the Big House by Charif Majdalani (shortlisted for the French-American Translation Prize). Extracts from her translations have appeared in Granta, Tripwire and Guernica. She lives in Aotearoa, New Zealand.