Édouard Louis Libri

An autobiographical novel from Édouard Louis, hailed as one of the most important voices of his generation—about social class, transformation, and the perils of leaving the past behind. One question took center stage in my life, it focused all of my thoughts and occupied every moment when I was alone with myself: how could I get this revenge, by what means? I tried everything. Édouard Louis longs for a life beyond the poverty, discrimination, and violence in his working-class hometown—so he sets out for school in Amiens, and, later, university in Paris. He sheds the provincial “Eddy” for an elegant new name, determined to eradicate every aspect of his past. He reads incessantly; he dines with aristocrats; he spends nights with millionaires and drug-dealers alike. Everything he does is motivated by a single obsession: to become someone else. At once harrowing and profound, Change is not just a personal odyssey, a story of dreams and of “the beautiful violence of being torn away,” but a profound portrait of a society divided by class, power, and inequality.

"Everything started with a photo. To see her free, hurtling fulsomely towards the future, made me think back to the life she shared with my father. Seeing the photo reminded me that those twenty years of devastation were not anything natural but were the result of external forces - society, masculinity, my father - and that things could have been otherwise. One day, Édouard Louis finds a photograph of his mother from twenty years ago. A picture of a happy young woman, full of hopes and dreams. Growing up, Édouard only knew his mother's sadness, as she found herself trapped in the humdrum life of a housewife, and her struggles against the dominant world of men. What happened in those years since the photo was taken? Then, at the age of forty-five, his mother frees herself from this oppression. She leaves her husband and her old life behind, to start a new one in Paris. A Woman's Battles and Transformations is Édouard Louis's most tender book yet. It reckons with the cruel systems that govern our lives, with politics and power - and with the possibility of escape. It is an exquisite and loving portrait of a mother, and an honouring of her self-discovery and liberation as she chooses to live on her own terms."--Publisher's description

This bracing new nonfiction book by the young superstar Ã%douard Louis is both a searing j'accuse of the viciously entrenched French class system and a wrenchingly tender love letter to his father. Who Killed My Father rips into France's long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French--at the minimum--of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely fifty years old, who can hardly walk or breathe:"You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death." It's as simple as that. But hand in hand with searing, specific denunciations are tender passages of a love between father and son, once damaged by shame, poverty and homophobia. Yet tenderness reconciles them, even as the state is killing off his father. Louis goes after the French system with bare knuckles but turns to his long-alienated father with open arms: this passionate combination makes Who Killed My Father a heartbreaking book.

'A brilliant novel... courageous, necessary and deeply touching' Guardian Édouard Louis grew up in a village in northern France where many live below the poverty line. His bestselling debut novel about life there, The End of Eddy, has sparked debate on social inequality, sexuality and violence. It is an extraordinary portrait of escaping from an unbearable childhood, inspired by the author's own. Written with an openness and compassionate intelligence, ultimately, it asks, how can we create our own freedom? 'A mesmerising story about difference and adolescence' New York Times 'Édouard Louis...is that relatively rare thing - a novelist with something to say and a willingness to say it, without holding back' The Times 'Louis' book has become the subject of political discussion in a way that novels rarely do' Garth Greenwell, New Yorker

I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012. I was going home after a meal with friends, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria. We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began. History of Violence retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, dispossession, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand, and to outline a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes.

Une nuit, j'ai reçu un appel de ma mère. Elle me disait au téléphone que l'homme avec qui elle vivait était ivre et qu'il l'insultait. Cela faisait plusieurs années que la même scène se reproduisait : cet homme buvait et une fois sous l'influence de l'alcool il l'attaquait avec des mots d'une violence extrême. Elle qui avait quitté mon père quelques années plus tôt pour échapper à l'enfermement domestique se retrouvait à nouveau piégée. Elle me l'avait caché pour ne pas "m'inquiéter" mais cette nuit-là était celle de trop. Je lui ai conseillé de partir, sans attendre. Mais comment vivre, et où, sans argent, sans diplômes, sans permis de conduire, parce qu'on a passé sa vie à élever des enfants et à subir la brutalité masculine ? Ce livre est le récit d'une évasion.

Mohou film a literatura vyřešit společenské problémy? Jak by se měla proměnit levice, aby dokázala čelit tomu, že se čím dál víc frustrovaných lidí obrací k populistům a extremistům? Uznávaný britský režisér a angažovaný francouzský spisovatel se v živém rozhovoru dotýkají i mnoha dalších bolestí současného světa: původu nesnášenlivosti, předsudků či homofobie, negativní role sociálních sítí, bezdomovectví, násilí, postavení žen či gayů. Úderný rozhovor staví most mezi generacemi levicového myšlení a bezděčně připomíná, co vlastně znamená etika dialogu.

Der Regisseur von »Ich, Daniel Blake« und der Autor von »Das Ende von Eddy« gemeinsam im Gespräch Édouard Louis und Ken Loach - zwei Künstler aus unterschiedlichen Ländern und Generationen blicken in ihren Werken immer wieder in die dunklen Ecken unserer Gesellschaft. Sie erzählen die Geschichten, die gerne verschwiegen werden: von Armut, sozialem Abstellgleis und politischer Gewalt. Hier treffen sich der Kultautor und der renommierte Filmemacher zum Gespräch über Kunst, Kino, Literatur und deren Bedeutung für die heutige Gesellschaft. Wie kann immer wieder neu über Klasse, soziale Gewalt und Gerechtigkeit nachgedacht werden? Wie sieht eine Kunst aus, die die Machtverhältnisse nicht nur beschreibt, sondern erschüttert? Wie kann sie intervenieren und mobilisieren? In ihrem Dialog entwerfen Ken Loach und Édouard Louis ein Manifest für eine radikale Veränderung der Kunst.