History of Violence

History of Violence - Paperback

$18.00
$18.00
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History of Violence
  • History of Violence
History of Violence - Paperback

History of Violence - Paperback

by Édouard Louis
$18.00
$18.00

Book Overview

A gripping autobiographical novel from literary sensation Édouard Louis, "both brave and ambitious in its determination never to let its reader, or its author, escape lightly the damaging realities it describes" (The Observer).

On Christmas Eve 2012, in Paris, Édouard Louis was raped and almost murdered by a man he had just met. This act of violence left Louis shattered; its aftermath made him a stranger to himself and sent him back to the village, the family, and the past he had sworn to leave behind.

A bestseller in France, History of Violence is a short nonfiction novel in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but with the victim as its subject. Moving seamlessly and hypnotically between past and present, between Louis's voice and the voice of an imagined narrator, History of Violence has the exactness of a police report and the searching, unflinching curiosity of memoir at its best. It records not only the casual racism and homophobia of French society but also their subtle effects on lovers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. It represents a great step forward for a young writer whose acuity, skill, and depth are unmatched by any of his generation, in French or English.
ISBN9781250449818
Author Édouard Louis
PublisherPicador USA
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedMay 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages224
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Crime Fiction LGBTQ+

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By Édouard Louis

About Édouard Louis

Born Eddy Bellegueule in Hallencourt, France, in 1992, Édouard Louis is a novelist and the editor of a scholarly work on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. He is the coauthor, with the philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, of "Manifesto for an Intellectual and Political Counteroffensive," published in English by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Michael Lucey is a professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author ofNever Say I: Sexuality and the First Person in Colette, Gide, and Proust and The Misfit of the Family: Balzac and the Social Forms of Sexuality, and has translated Returning to Reims by Didier Eribon.

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