History of Violence: A Novel By Édouard Louis, Lorin Stein (Translated by) Cover Image
By Édouard Louis, Lorin Stein (Translated by)
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Description


History of Violence is international bestselling French author Edouard Louis’s autobiographical novel about surviving a shocking sexual assault and coping with the post-traumatic stress disorder of its aftermath.

On Christmas Eve 2012, in Paris, the novelist 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 novelist of his generation, in French or English.

About the Author


Édouard Louis is the author of The End of Eddy, History of Violence, and Who Killed My Father, and the editor of a book on the social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Freeman’s. His books have been translated into thirty languages and have made him one of the most celebrated writers of his generation worldwide.

Praise For…


"In this moving autobiographical novel . . . Louis's visceral story captures the overwhelming emotional impact and complicated shame of surviving sexual assault." —Publishers Weekly

"A sobering tale of crime and the exhausting search for justice in its aftermath . . . slender but altogether powerful, unsparing in detail and not without sympathy for the people who are caught up in it, the reader included." —Kirkus Reviews



Product Details
ISBN: 9780374170592
ISBN-10: 0374170592
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: June 19th, 2018
Pages: 224
Language: English