End of Eddy

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 Im 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 differentgirlish, intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.Already translated into twenty 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, douard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The resulta critical and popular triumphhas made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.