The End of Eddy

Édouard Louis

A Dynamic Debut – No one does shame and humiliation like the French. “The End of Eddy” is a powerful debut novel, a gripping read that tells the story of Eddy’s growing up gay and effeminate in a Marine Le Pen-loving village in northern France. Moreover, it is the story of a patriarchal, class-structured society in which workers stuck on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder get stepped on and stepped over. The power struggles – political, economic, sexual – are vividly drawn and felt. The book reads more like a personal essay than a novel – a trait not new to social realism. In fact, I often have marveled how the best non-fiction reads like fiction and how the best fiction reads like non-fiction. “The End of Eddy” is translated by Michael Lucey, who also translated “Returning to Reims,” by Didier Eribon. Louis dedicates “The End of Eddy” to Eribon and has spoken about the impact “Returning to Reims” had on helping him shape and write his own story.