Édouard Louis

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

Biography

Édouard Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule was born and raised in the town of Hallencourt in northern France, which is the setting of his first novel, the autobiographical En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (2014; published in English in 2018 as The End of Eddy).

Louis grew up in a poor family supported by government welfare: his father was a factory worker for a decade until "One day at work, a storage container fell on him and crushed his back, leaving him bedridden, on morphine for the pain" and unable to work. His mother found occasional work bathing the elderly. The poverty, racism, alcoholism and his homosexuality which he dealt with in his family 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 two of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in France, the École Normale Supérieure and to the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences 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 generated debate and controversy over social perception of the working class. It was a bestseller in France and has been translated into more than 20 languages.