Edouard Louis: life with his brothers in arms and in spirit

The success of Edouard Louis, author of En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (The End of Eddy), owes a lot to his deep friendship with the sociologists Didier Eribon and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie. Inseparable, the trio form one of the most virulent voices of the radical left.

On February 9 2010, in a packed amphitheatre of the University of Picardie, a young man has a life-changing moment. Having come to listen to a Parisian intellectual tell the story of his childhood and his homosexual adolescence in a working class family — the rejection and the shame, the flight and the exile, the return, finally, in his despised town of Reims — he is overwhelmed by these words, which resonate with his own experience. At the end of the lecture, like other students, he approaches the man to tell him how much he moved him. Didier Eribon, the man in question, agrees to give his email address to this tall blond-haired boy and says to him: “Here, we’re going to have a drink with some of the teachers, come with us.”