Self-Worth

True love versus easy money - which would you choose if your partner was literally your golden goose?

The day her careers counsellor informs her that her philosophy major has left her with 'no special skills', Anna gives up on her ambitions and her brilliant career as a student. Now a warm-up act for a TV talk show, she finds consolation only in her relationship: she and Lulu have true love, the kind only two minimum-wage workers defying contemporary consumer society could ever know.

Until one day, Lulu starts vomiting money. While he purges himself of enough to keep her in designer handbags, Anna wonders: should she be worried about his health or should she do her best to make sure he never stops?

In Self Worth, newcomer Emma Tholozan delivers a raw, brutally funny portrait of a generation without ideals.

About the author

Emma Tholozan is a writer and editor based in Paris, France. Her interests include literature and cinema. After studying philosophy, her first novel was published in 2025, a funny, wacky fable about the power of money and social success. It won the Prix des Catherinettes and the Prix du roman TMV.
Emma Ramadan is an educator and literary translator from French. She was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Abdellah Taïa’s A Country for Dying, and has also received the Albertine Prize, two NEA Fellowships, and a Fulbright. Her other translations include Maud Ventura’s My Husband, Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, and Virginie Despentes’s Pretty Things.

Product details

• Authors: Emma Tholozan
• Assisted by: Ramadan Emma (Translation)
• Publisher: Scribe
• Original title: Le rire des autres
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 09.04.2026
• EAN: 9781915590978
• ISBN: 978-1-915590-97-8
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Women, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Humorous / General, France, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Dystopian, FICTION / Satire, Fiction in translation, Humorous fiction, Contemporary lifestyle fiction, Dystopian and utopian fiction, FICTION / World Literature / France / 21st Century, Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: social issues / social problems, Narrative theme: politics / economics