Part Calaferte, part Edward Bunker, Matthieu Seel has written the first great French novel about crack. — Virginie Despentes

He lays himself bare here: it is a question of survival. — L’Obs

A beautiful, electric and edgy novel that shakes us from the first page and leaves us breathless after the last line. — PAGE des Libraires

Do scars eventually fade? Nothing really lasts long, prophesies the title of his book. In this first-person account, published at the end of August by HarperCollins, the author recounts the twists and turns of this rocky path. — Le Parisien

The first, unprecedented first-hand account by a former crack addict.

His diction is that of a hurried little boy. The images he conjures are like shots fired within your soul. Matthieu Seel—“Charles” in the book—relates his journey without a second of downtime.

His anonymous birth, his life as a kid with a thousand questions, a kid who wants to grow up too quickly in hopes of answering them someday, his first steps, then his first joints in the 19th arrondissement of Paris where he grew up and in the elegant gardens of the Rive Gauche where he chose his lifelong moniker, his crack-induced wanderings through the streets, the Metro, parking lots, and Crack Hill in northern Paris, he holds nothing back.

“Charles” drifted from one world to another, looking for his place, until one day he hit rock bottom. But in the end, Matthieu managed to triumph over “Charles”. He also shares all about his redemption after addiction, detoxing, and the precarious balancing act that is his existence.

Nothing Really Lasts Long is both a statement and a wish. A rare first book, an ode to those we walk past without even a glance, a written trace of all of the violence in the world. It’s an incandescent account from a sensitive boy who had every reason to die but chose to live.