Édouard Louis

Édouard Louis
File:Edouard Louis at Columbia University.jpg Édouard Louis at Columbia University, 2014
Born	Eddy Bellegueule (1992-10-10) October 10, 1992 Picardie, France
Occupation	Writer
Language	French
Genre	Novel, drama; Non-Fiction, Sociology

Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule; October 30, 1992) is a French writer.

Biography

Édouard Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule was born and raised in the town of Hallencourt in the North of France, which is the setting of his first novel En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule.

Louis grew-up in a poor family supported by government welfare: his father was an unemployed factory worker and his mother found occasional work bathing the elderly. The poverty, racism and alcoholism which confronted him during his childhood would become the subject of his literary work.

He is the first in his family to attend university, and in 2011 he was admitted to École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 2013, he officially changed his name to Édouard Louis.

The same year, he edited the collective work, Pierre Bourdieu. L'insoumission en héritage, which analyses the influence of Pierre Bourdieu on critical thinking and political emancipation.

In 2014 he published En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule, an autobiographical novel. The book was the subject of extensive media attention and was hailed for its literary merit and compelling story. The book also gave rise to debate and controversy over the perception of the working class. It was a bestseller in France and has been translated to over 20 languages.

In September of 2015, Edouard Louis penned a Manifesto for an Intellectual and Political Counteroffensive alongside philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie. In the letter, which ran on the front page of Le Monde, and was later reprinted in English by the Los Angeles Review of Books, Louis and Lagasnerie denounce the legitimization of right-wing agendas in public discourse and establish principals by which leftist intellectuals should reengage in public debate.

In 2016, Louis published his second novel, History of Violence. In recounting the story of his rape and attempted murder on Christmas Eve of 2012, the autobiographical novel centers around the cyclical and self-perpetuating nature of violence in society.

Style and Influences

The work of Édouard Louis maintains a fine link with sociology: the presence of Pierre Bourdieu pervades his novels which invoke the themes of social exclusion, domination, and poverty. The influence of William Faulkner is also revealed through Louis' superposition in the same sentence of various levels of language – placing the popular vernacular at the heart of his writing. Furthermore, Louis' novel Histoire de la Violence contains an essay on Faulker's novel Sanctuary. The author says that by working languages, he wants to use violence as a literary subject, "I want to make violence a literary space, like Marguerite Duras made a literary space of madness or as Claude Simon made war into a literary space."

The greatest contemporary influence on Louis comes from French sociologist Didier Eribon, whose book "Returning to Reims" Louis says, "marked a turning point for his future as a writer."

Works

Non-Fiction

• Pierre Bourdieu. L'insoumission en héritage, Édouard Louis (editor), Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, Arlette Farge, Frédéric Lordon, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie et Frédéric Lebaron, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2013; ISBN 978-2-13-061935-2)
• Foucault contre lui-même ["Foucault against himself"]: François Caillat (editor), Édouard Louis (director), avec Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Arlette Farge, Didier Eribon, (Presses Universitaires de France, 2014; ISBN 978-2-13-063289-4)

Awards

• 2014 : Pierre Guénin Prize against homophobia and for equal rights, for his work En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule.

External links

• Blog of Édouard Louis.