Who Killed My Father

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

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

Who Killed My Father rips into France's long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French politicians- at the minimum-of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely fifty years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: "You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death." It's as simple as that. Hand in hand with searing, specific denunciations are tender passages of a love between father and son, damaged early on by shame, poverty, and homophobia. Yet tenderness reconciles them, even as the state is killing off his father. Louis goes after the French system with bare knuckles but turns to his long-alienated father with open arms: this passionate combination makes Who Killed My Father a heartbreaking book.

Who Killed My Father rips into France's long neglect of the working class and its overt contempt for the poor, accusing the complacent French politicians- at the minimum-of negligent homicide. The author goes to visit the ugly gray town of his childhood to see his dying father, barely fifty years old, who can hardly walk or breathe: "You belong to the category of humans whom politics consigns to an early death." It's as simple as that. Hand in hand with searing, specific denunciations are tender passages of a love between father and son, damaged early on by shame, poverty, and homophobia. Yet tenderness reconciles them, even as the state is killing off his father. Louis goes after the French system with bare knuckles but turns to his long-alienated father with open arms: this passionate combination makes Who Killed My Father a heartbreaking book.