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History of Violence

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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of History of Violence by Edouard Louis, read by Joseph Kloska.

The radical and urgent new novel from the author of The End of Eddy

I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012. I was going home after a meal with friends, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria.

We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began.

History of Violence retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, dispossession, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand, and to outline, a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes.

 Biographical Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Biography

Critic reviews

Louis’s greatest strength as a writer is that he feels things so passionately, sometimes to the point of obsession, but that he also has a philosophical turn of mind that explores, rather than neutralises, his feelings. (Edmund White)
[B]oth brave and ambitious in its determination never to let its reader, or its author, escape lightly the damaging realities it describes. (Tim Adams)
[A] harrowing piece of autofiction… History of Violence is a slim but densely layered novel that begins with raw urgency. (Johanna Thomas-Corr)
[A] heartbreaking novel… I find myself captivated by Édouard Louis's books and his raw honesty. (John Boyne)
An intense and uncomfortably thrilling book, which uses the harrowing events of that Christmas Eve as a basis for a wider exploration of class, race and individualism... a novel that is unflinching in its examination of class and discrimination. (Tash Aw)
[Louis] writes with this amazing honesty and fantastically uncensored, brutal, beautiful clarity. (Ben Whishaw)
A painful and astonishing book, it tells the story of that night and its aftermath with ruthless poise and clinical precision… With almost superhuman compassion and moral courage, Louis traces the origins of Reda’s suffering by reconstructing his father’s story. (Matt Rowland Hill)
History of Violence…pack[s] total immersion and cool detachment into a single page. As translator, Lorin Stein keeps faith with its rawness — and its refinement. (Boyd Tonkin)
[A] provocative, incendiary and stunning second book.
Once more, Édouard Louis has given us something unique; a book so direct, shocking and moving it is like holding live fire in one's hands as the pages turn. Like all great writers, he shows us something of the self so that we might better understand something of the world. (Andrew McMillan)
All stars
Most relevant
I really enjoyed Louis' first book 'The End of Eddy', so I approached this book with great expectation. Such a different book but with expectation exceeded.

It's a sad, difficult read but one that really examines with forensic detail the aftermath of a seriously traumatic event. It is not gratuitous but guides the reader through the months following the attack.

Obligatory reading for anyone who works with people who have been traumatised (for any reason). It's not a happy read/listen but it is an important one.

Incredible exploration of the aftermath of rape

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Horrific story told objectively that stylistically seems cold and remote yet the first person lets the facts speak for themselves.

Cool detachment belies the reality

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