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‘A brilliant novel... courageous, necessary and deeply touching’ Guardian Édouard Louis grew up in a village in northern France where many live below the poverty line. His bestselling debut novel about life there, The End of Eddy, has sparked debate on social inequality, sexuality and violence. It is an extraordinary portrait of escaping from an unbearable childhood, inspired by the author’s own. Written with an openness and compassionate intelligence, ultimately, it asks, how can we create our own freedom? ‘A mesmerising story about difference and adolescence’ New York Times ‘Édouard Louis...is that relatively rare thing – a novelist with something to say and a willingness to say it, without holding back’ The Times ‘Louis’ book has become the subject of political discussion in a way that novels rarely do’ Garth Greenwell, New Yorker
Who Killed My Father is the story of a tough guy – the story of the little boy I never was. The story of my father. ‘What a beautiful book’ MAX PORTER In Who Killed My Father, Édouard Louis explores key moments in his father’s life, and the tenderness and disconnects in their relationship. Told with the fire of a writer determined on social justice, and with the compassion of a loving son, the book urgently and brilliantly engages with issues surrounding masculinity, class, homophobia, shame and social poverty. It unflinchingly takes aim at systems that disadvantage those they seek to exclude – those who have their expectations, hopes and passions crushed by a society which gives them little thought. ‘Édouard Louis is the vanguard of France’s new generation of political writers’ Evening Standard
** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award ** The radical, urgent new novel from the author of The End of Eddy - a personal and powerful story of violence. I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria. We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began. History of Violence retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, class, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes. 'It stays with you' Times 'A heartbreaking novel' John Boyne
From the voices of protesters to the encroachment of a new fascism, everywhere we look power is revealed. Spouse to spouse, soldier to citizen, looker to gazed upon, power is never static: it is either demonstrated or deployed. Its hoarding is itself a demonstration. This thought-provoking issue of the acclaimed literary annual Freeman's explores who gets to say what matters in a time of social upheaval. Many of the writers are women. Margaret Atwood posits it is time to update the gender of werewolf narratives. Aminatta Forna shatters the silences which supposedly ensured her safety as a woman of colour walking in public space. Power must often be seized. The narrator of Lan Samantha Chang'...
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A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on “the periphery.” As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.
'A deeply intelligent and searching book, one that makes you re-consider the narrative of your own life and reframe the story you tell yourself' Hilary Mantel "There was a question that had come to trouble me a bit earlier, once I had taken the first steps on this return journey to Reims... Why, when I have had such an intense experience of forms of shame related to class ... why had it never occurred to me to take up this problem in a book?" Returning to Reims is a breath-taking memoir of return, a family story of class, sexuality, gender and of the shifting political allegiances of the French working classes. A phenomenon in France and a huge bestseller in Germany, Didier Eribon has written the defining memoir of our times.
An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy. “Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—“girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men. Already translated into twenty-nine languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result—a critical and popular triumph—has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Advocate “Catherine Cusset’s book caught a lot of me. I could recognize myself.” —David Hockney With clear, vivid prose, this meticulously researched novel draws an intimate, moving portrait of the most famous living English painter. Born in 1937 in a small town in the north of England, David Hockney had to fight to become an artist. After leaving his home in Bradford for the Royal College of Art in London, his career flourished, but he continued to struggle with a sense of not belonging, because of his homosexuality, which had yet to be decriminalized, and his inclination for a figurative style of art not sufficiently “contemporary” to be valued. Trips to New York and California—where he would live for many years and paint his iconic swimming pools—introduced him to new scenes and new loves, beginning a journey that would take him through the fraught years of the AIDS epidemic. A compelling hybrid of novel and biography, Life of David Hockney offers an insightful overview of a painter whose art is as accessible as it is compelling, and whose passion to create has never been deterred by heartbreak or illness or loss.
The Argentine literary sensation that has taken the Spanish-speaking world by storm: a dark, surreal and beautiful novel about violence, exclusion and love 'A fragment of the future' Edouard Louis 'Ferocious and magical' Torrey Peters, Guardian 'It will break your heart' Mariana Enriquez 'Naked, glorious storytelling' Claire Oshetsky 'A literary sensation' Rolling Stone Auntie Encarna's is the queerest boarding house in the world. For Camila, it is a refuge, and the travesti who gather there are like family. At night they head out to Sarmiento Park to earn money. They stand together in the cold, sharing stories and a hip flask of whiskey, waiting for a car to slow down. Until, one freezing evening, Auntie Encarna hears crying in the bushes and wades in to investigate. When she finds an abandoned baby boy, she will hear no arguments: she is bringing him home to care for him. Life for Camila and the others will never be the same again. Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award Winner of the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize Winner of the Premio de Narrativa en Castellano Winner of the Grand Prix de l'héroïne Madame Figaro