“Bourgeois Culture Is a Weapon of Violence”: An Interview with Édouard Louis

Édouard Louis is fearless — and he’s been rewarded for it. In 2014, at just twenty-two, he announced himself with The End of Eddy, a debut that made it clear he would be one of the defining voices of contemporary French literature. He’s been writing ever since with the same uncompromising clarity about his journey from a poor village in northern France to the heart of Parisian intellectual life. Today, his books are translated into dozens of languages, adapted for the stage, and — soon — for Netflix. Judging by the rapt crowd at his recent talk at Moda Sahnesi in Istanbul, Louis is no longer simply a writer; he’s become a phenomenon. And yet what makes him extraordinary isn’t just popularity. He’s already being spoken of in the same breath as Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, and Ken Loach. For many, the Nobel feels like a matter of “when,” not “if.”

We had agreed to meet in the lobby of his Istanbul hotel, but we actually run into each other on the steep streets of Çukurcuma. He’s wearing an ecru T-shirt, New Balance sneakers, carrying a grocery bag with two bottles of water inside, humming to himself. When I introduce myself, he flashes a quick, warm smile. Soon enough, we’ve found a shaded spot, ordered iced coffees, and settled in for what becomes a ninety-minute conversation — about shame, the price of social mobility, and the possibility of imagining a new left.

What stays with me most are his eyes: icy blue, unblinking, locking onto yours. They feel like his prose — poverty, violence, the working class all rendered with the same piercing clarity, a refusal to look away. This interview can be read as a portrait of a writer, a reckoning with provincial roots, or simply as a set of notes on class. It’s all of those things at once.

“BACK HOME, I FEEL LIKE THEY’D KILL ME”

Elif: You’ve written about your village, your family, your past in a very unforgiving way. Do you ever go back?

Louis: No. I feel like they’d pick up baseball bats and kill me. I’ll never go back.

Elif: Do you wish you could?

Louis: I tried, once. At night. In disguise. And I realized it was impossible. It isn’t really about geography. You can be there, physically, but if your body has changed, if your language has changed, if your whole way of seeing the world has shifted… you think you’re returning, but really it’s like standing in front of a photograph. You’re no longer part of it. And that feeling was so cold. Utterly melancholic.

For the full interview https://aposto.com/s/edouard-louis-ile-edebiyatin-islevi-uzerine-burjuva-kultur-bir