Immediately after the World of Books fair, the popular French writer Édouard Louis will arrive in Prague. The young author, whose books are often referred to as so-called autofiction, will present the Czech translation of his latest novel How to Become Others. The Paseka publishing house informed about it.
The debate will take place on Monday 15 May at the French Institute. Admission is free, but visitors must register on the website in advance.
Édouard Louis writes exclusively about his life, providing an analysis of socially weak areas or minorities excluded from society. It depicts poverty and its connections, it does not romanticize the life or virtues of the socially deprived. “His uniqueness lies in his ability to tell very personal stories and at the same time let something widely experienced resonate in them, which, of course, a substantial part of the secured readership only guesses at best,” Aktuálně.cz wrote about him.
His novel Ending with Eddy B. became a French literary event in 2015. The book surprised the 21-year-old sociology student with an insight into the lives of poor whites, for whom politics is a matter of life and death. Over 300,000 copies were quickly sold. With the growing wave of populist movements and the rise of Marine Le Pen, Édouard Louis became a celebrity and a kind of expert on her voters. The novel was shortlisted for the prestigious Goncourt prize.
Several reports about his outraged family contributed to the author’s popularity. The writer openly described the father’s alcoholic excesses and how the mother stole food from the neighbors so that they would have something to eat. But above all, Louis described his own childhood and adolescence in a poor, angry countryside where people consider racism and homophobia to be a priority. As a gay man, the novelist also struggled with toxic masculinity and bullying.
After the publication of the English translation, the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States or after Brexit, the novel Ending with Eddy B. was also warmly received in Great Britain and the USA.
Louis’ next prose was already one of the expected titles, not only on a French, but also on a European scale. The book, entitled History of Violence, goes back to the events of December 2012, when the author was raped and almost murdered by a man he met on the way from Christmas dinner and invited him home.
Also, the novel Jak se stát oem, which Paseka has now published again in a translation by Sára Vybíralová, falls into the genre of autofiction, which means that it combines autobiography with the methods of artistic literature. This time, Louis wonders if a person can constantly change without losing himself.
The hero ran away from the village to the city, where he tried to distance himself as much as possible from his roots already at the gymnasium. He longed to find a new identity even later at the universities of Amiens and Paris. As a writer, he experiences success, receives media attention, travels constantly and talks about his life. The attention and recognition is addictive at first. However, fatigue and disgust gradually set in. The protagonist would prefer to run away from everything again and continue the endless reinvention of himself.
Thirty-year-old Édouard Louis was born Eddy Bellegueule in Hallencourt, Picardy, northern France. In Czech, his works were published in Czech: Stopping with Eddy B., History of Violence, Who Killed My Father, Struggles and Transformations of One Woman, and now How to Become Others.
His texts have also received theatrical adaptations, Ending with Eddy B. was staged by the East Bohemian Theater in Pardubice, Who Killed My Father was staged by Venus in Prague’s Švehlovka, while History of Violence is performed by Švand’s theater.
