A Family Affair

It is not often that a memoir leads to a change in the law. But such was the impact of this powerful book that within weeks of its publication in France in January last year, its parliament began studying a bill to tighten the rules on incest.

Olivier Duhamel, the Left Bank intellectual accused in it of assaulting his stepson, dropped out of public life, while tens of thousands of people used the hashtag #MeTooInceste to tell their own stories of abuse.