After Michel Houellebecq’s „Serotonin“ reached Edouard Louis ‚“Who killed my father“ another piece of French political reality the local literary market – this time quite different: Louis‘ text is a furious expression of love to a broken working-class father and made in France for fierce debates.
„Who killed my father“: The title of the German-language edition is a question, but the ambiguous French original – „Qui a tue mon pere“ – hits it better, because it can also be read as a statement. The third work of the French young star is in fact neither pondering nor doubting as far as his diagnosis is concerned.
It does not ask questions, but contains – in Du form addressed to the father – a sharp indictment of those who allegedly maltreated and allegedly inflicted on his body so that at the age of 50 he survives his nights with only an oxygen device.
„Macron steals the food from your plate“
The biography of the damaged body is a political story: „Who killed my father“ stages the decay of the paternal body parallel to the history of French social reforms. Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande: Louis accuses her of being a murderer here. As men whose actions meant not only „a little excitement“ for the lower classes, but actually aimed directly at their bodies. How, that drives Louis in personified blame on the top.
„Emmanuel Macron steals your food right off your plate,“ he writes about housing subsidy cuts, „Nicolas Sarkozy and Martin Hirsch have broken your backbone“ on the amended Social Assistance Act, which forced the father, a former factory worker, to do so despite chronic illness Back pain after a serious accident at work to accept an underpaid job as a street sweeper.
An author polarizes France
A book as an eloquent indictment of the rulers – which does not say all, but at least the part is called, which polarized France so: While „Le Monde“ Edouard Louis paid great respect for his „art of confrontation“ attacked him other than pompous, analytically confused and radical Left Ultra Bourdieu followers.
Incidentally, the Elysee Palace also tweeted shortly after the publication: „We read Edouard Louis: A recapture? At any rate, Louis did not want to leave it undisputed, and promptly replied, „My writing rebels against everything that you are and what you do.“
A unique career
But again from the beginning: The fact that this just 80-page narrow tapes in France could cause so much uproar, not least has to do with the fact that Louis has already laid a career at 26 years, which is probably unique. He grew up in the French province of Picardy, the son of a factory worker, in the midst of poverty, violence and homophobia. The move to Paris was followed by a degree in sociology, class advancement and, in the changed milieu, the „shame“ about one’s own origins.
It is also the concept of shame that finally plays a key role in his autobiographical writing: at 21, Edouard Louis published „The End of Eddy“, with 24 „In the Heart of Violence“. Both have been translated into more than 20 languages, both of which are best-selling and about what it means to come from the bottom, from the memories of a bleak youth, the discovery of homosexuality in difficult conditions, and a topic that is rarely the literature was: a rape among men.
„Literature must fight“
These are two drastic books which, it is said, shocked critics and the readership and at the same time thrilled them: Louis received numerous awards, including the Prix Goncourt du premier roman, „In the Heart of Violence“ became theater Adapted, performed by Thomas Ostermeier at the Berlin Schaubühne. The step into the academic world followed: As the youngest ever, he joined the Samuel Fischer Visiting Professorship at the Free University of Berlin last summer, where he again consistently put his themes under the title „History of Literature – History of Violence“: „Literature must fight – for all those who can not fight themselves, who are doomed to silence“.
Fighting, for Edouard Louis, often in association with his former teacher Didier Eribon, is advocating for the cause of the working class and the misunderstood „yellow vests.“ And last but not least, Louis wants to „revolt against forgetting people“ and bring the underrepresented and the unheard into the middle of the bourgeois living room, where they complain all too easily about the lazy and unwilling to work without knowing their reality really looks.
The purification of a homophobic racist
This is precisely the strength of „Who killed my father.“ Because in addition to the sharp political accusation Louis convinces in his struggle for the representation of a marginalized biography. The father is here, in scenes and images that skillfully interweaves Louis and knows how to stage with much melodic flair, the ambivalent figure: a book that corrects to some extent the image of the hard, racist and homophobic man that is known from the first.
A father between powerlessness, anger and yet with potential for change and even a pinch of tenderness. Finally, the father of the Front National voter turns into an accomplice and shouts to the son, „That’s right. That’s right, I think what it would take is a decent revolution. „As simple and straightforward as that may sound, one is grateful for the spark of optimism that Louis wants to finally spread here.
