Édouard Louis is a French writer and educator. He was Visiting Professor at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin.
Background
Édouard Louis was born Eddy Bellegueule on October 30, 1992, in the town of Hallencourt in the North of France. 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.
Education
Édouard received a Bachelor of Arts from the École Normale Supérieure. He has also been admitted to the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris.
Career
The poverty, racism and alcoholism which confronted Edouard during his childhood would become the subject of his literary work. He officially changed his name to Édouard Louis in 2013. He edited the collective work, L'insoumission en héritage, which analyses the influence of Pierre Bourdieu on critical thinking and political emancipation. He is also editor of two volumes on the philosopher Michel Foucault. 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.
In 2016, Louis published his next 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. It also contains an essay on Faulker's novel Sanctuary.
In May 2018, Louis released his third novel, Who Killed My Father. He explores the deteriorating health of his father, who had been severely injured in an industrial accident, and the additional bodily harm he endures as a result of political decisions that reduced his financial support and forced him back to work.
Louis was also the 39th Samuel Fischer Visiting Professor at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin during the 2018 summer semester. He taught a course on the History of literature, history of violence.
Politics
In addition to his literary work, Louis is known in particular for his political commitment. He is the coauthor, with the philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, of "Manifesto for an Intellectual and Political Counteroffensive", which was published on the front page of Le Monde and later reprinted in English by the Los Angeles Review of Books. In the letter Louis and Lagasnerie denounce the legitimization of right-wing agendas in public discourse and establish principles by which leftist intellectuals should reengage in public debate. In 2017 Louis wrote "Why My Father Votes for Le Pen", an op-ed that was published on the front page of the New York Times. In the piece, Louis argued that the rise in popularity of nationalist and right-wing politicians among working class and poor voters in France was a result of changing priorities on the left.
Views
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. The author says that by working languages, he wants to use violence as a literary subject.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Édouard is officially gay.