“A Woman’s Battles” is Louis’ most hopeful book to date. Watching Louis speak and act, it’s clear that he needs his message to connect. Earlier this year he performed in a one-man play in Brooklyn based on his third novel, “Who Killed My Father?,” donning a makeshift superhero costume for the show’s finale to make a series of dramatic accusations against French politicians. He’s also a beguiling, photogenic interviewee and a committed ambassador for both his work and his politics. His second novel, “History of Violence,” a devastating record of a sexual assault Louis experienced as a younger man, was the work of a writer for whom no subject was off limits. He’s disarmingly frank and earnest in a way that makes it difficult to stop looking - like a child who won’t break eye contact. The reasons he has charmed readers are obvious. Much of his work has been adapted for the stage, and a fifth book has already been published in French. This has paved the way for his rising renown - he became a prominent commentator in English-language outlets during the French anti-government protests in 2018-19. But while Knausgaard’s “struggle” takes place largely on interior planes, Louis describes his personal and familial travails in terms of political forces. Like his European confrère Karl Ove Knausgaard, Louis has turned to the novel as a way to process traumatic personal history, finding a sympathetic global audience in the process. He has explored this milieu in three subsequent volumes, including “ A Woman’s Battles and Transformations,” now available in Tash Aw’s English version. His debut, “ The End of Eddy,” was a hardscrabble portrait of growing up gay and poor in northern France. In his incandescent autofiction, Édouard Louis has remade his painful youth as literature, and in doing so has become one of his country’s most famous literary exports. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

Karl ove knausgaard 2022