When his debut novel caused a sensation in France, Édouard Louis was just 21. The End of Eddy (originally published in 2014 as En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule) was an unflinching account of Louis’s difficult childhood as a gay boy in Hallencourt, a postindustrial village in northern France. In this world, the men were monstrous alcoholics, the women were trapped in miserable marriages, and the children were too many. Louis chronicled a community ravaged by addiction and violence and abandoned by the state. He described the working class at its worst: These men and women weren’t just tired and hungry; they were resentful, callous, and racist. To make life even tougher for luckless little Eddy Bellegueule (Louis’s birth name), they also proved to be viciously homophobic.
