History of Violence
A Novel
ISBN10: 0374170592
ISBN13: 9780374170592
Hardcover
224 Pages
$25.00
CA$32.50
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.
Reviews
Praise for History of Violence
"A sobering tale of crime and the exhausting search for justice in its aftermath."—Kirkus Reviews
"In this moving autobiographical novel . . . Louis's visceral story captures the overwhelming emotional impact and complicated shame of surviving sexual assault."—Publishers Weekly
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
1.
I am hidden on the other side of the door, I listen, and she says that several hours after what the copy of the report I keep twice-folded in my drawer calls the attempted homicide, and which I call the same thing for...