Qui a tué mon père

Édouard Louis addresses his father in this short, fierce essay-memoir, written as a series of reflections on a body worn down by poverty and work. His father, a former factory worker in northern France, was left disabled after an accident and later forced to take a street-cleaning job for a minimal wage. Louis recalls a childhood of coldness and mockery that turned to a late, awkward closeness. Instead of blaming one man, he points to the French politicians whose welfare and labor policies, including cuts under Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande and Macron, shaped his father's fate.

For readers interested in class, masculinity and how policy lands on a single body, this is a compact, angry and tender text. It reads in one sitting but is easy to return to.

Inward-looking; an easy read.

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