History of Violence
A Novel
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4.2 • 16 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this moving autobiographical novel, Louis (The End of Eddy) lightly fictionalizes his own rape and attempted murder in brutal detail. Late on Christmas Eve in Paris, douard picks up Reda, a son of a Berber immigrant, on the street and takes him back to his apartment. After the two have sex, douard's accurate accusation of theft enrages Reda, who strangles him with a scarf and rapes him at gunpoint. The novel takes the form of a lengthy monologue by douard's sister, Clara, recounting the event to her husband after douard returns to the stifling unnamed northern French village of his childhood in an attempt to cope with his trauma. In the midst of Clara's tale, douard interjects additions, highlighting the pressure from his friends to report the attack to the police and his contradictory urges to talk about it and remain silent. Official systems fail to help: the police are dismissively racist and casually homophobic and doctors are cold and robotic. The unresolved conclusion, with no sense that justice has been served, heightens the horror. Louis's visceral story captures the overwhelming emotional impact and complicated shame of surviving sexual assault.
