History of Violence

Édouard Louis

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History of Violence is an 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 short nonfiction novel in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but with the victim as its subject, History of Violence moves 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.