Édouard Louis was born and raised in a poor, working-class family in Hallencourt, a post-industrial village in northern France where many live below the poverty line. The poverty, racism, alcoholism and his homosexuality which he dealt with during his childhood would become the subject of his literary work. He is the first in his family to attend university.
In 2011, he was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure and to the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. Two years later, he edited the collective work, Pierre Bourdieu : l’insoumission en heritage (PUF, 2013), which analyses the influence of Pierre Bourdieu on critical thinking and political emancipation.
A wrenching account of growing up in poverty while struggling with homophobia and classism, his debut novel, the autobiographical En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (2014), became a bestseller and was subsequently translated into more than 20 languages. In 2016, Louis published Histoire de la violence, an unblinking narrative about surviving a shocking sexual assault, as well as a deep reflection upon the social violences in which sexual violence is embedded. In 2018, Louis released his third novel, Qui a tué mon père, in which 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. Changer: méthode (2021) is the chronicle of his journey from working-class rural Picardy to literary stardom in Paris, using the story of his own metamorphosis as a prism through which to explore the possibility of change. Combats et métamorphoses d’une femme (2022) is a sociological exploration of his mother’s life, leading up to her decision to leave Louis’s abusive father. Connecting her past self with her living conditions, Monique s’évade (2024) tells the story of her escape from this man, and of the writer’s role in helping her to start anew and continue the “transformations” outlined in the earlier book. In his new book, L’Effondrement (2024), the author explores his relationship with his older brother, who died at the age of thirty-eight, a life cut short by unemployment and alcohol.
Theatre has been crucial in shaping his writing. Louis has played himself onstage in Thomas Ostermeier’s version of Who Killed My Father, a monologue commissioned and originally performed by the French actor and director Stanislas Nordey. Louis and NTGent director Milo Rau collaborated on a theatrical piece titled The Interrogation, a solo performance exploring the thin line between acting, living and surviving. With Ostermeier, he jointly authored the stage adaptation of his autobiographical novel Histoire de la violence (published in French as Au cœur de la violence).
“I’m not interested in myself, in a way. What is interesting to me is when people use violence or suffering or trauma, and turn it into something collective and political, and try to change something out of it.” (Édouard Louis)
