Since its initial publication in 2014, the memoir has sold 300,000 copies in France with its author, 24-year-old Édouard Louis, being called a literary sensation.

The threat of a Le Pen presidency probably motivated many of the urban classes to seek to understand her appeal, evidenced in the popularity of books such as The End of Eddy. In France, they have been called ‘les couches moyennes’, a section of society whose social status has been relentlessly undermined by the vast economic and social changes that have occurred since the early 1990s. In the UK, this phenomenon has been described by political scientists Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin as the revenge of the ‘left behinds’: a social group that lacks the education and skills to survive in the modern, de-industrialised economy and is at odds with the socially liberal urbanite middle classes who dominate public life. Much in the same way that the Brexit map sharply illustrates the political rural-urban divide between ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ votes in the UK, the 2017 voter map of France reflects almost identical voting patterns, with Front National thriving in France’s rural areas and En Marche! dominating the prosperous cities and their suburbs. In the final round of the election, Le Pen came second but won 36 per cent of the popular vote, with an estimated 11 million French voters backing the party’s strict migration controls, promotion of ‘traditional’ French values and protectionist economic policies.

Much ink has been spilled over the ‘divided France’ exposed during the country’s long presidential election campaign in the first half of 2017, which ended in a run-off between Emmanuel Macron and his newly founded centrist party, En Marche!, and the far-right Front Nationale, led by Marine Le Pen. Find out what other books were recommended here. The End of Eddy was also included as part of a reading list by LSE Spectrum to mark #IDAHOBIT2017. While the book has being widely received for offering insight into current divisions within French society as well as the recent electoral success of Marine Le Pen, Peter Carrol also welcomes it as an elegantly written contribution to contemporary LGBT literature.

With The End of Eddy, Édouard Louis gives an autobiographical account of his experience of homophobia and economic inequality growing up in Hallencourt, a village in the north of France where many live below the poverty line.

The end of eddy by édouard louis