Édouard Louis's 2014 debut novel, The End of Eddy—an instant literary success, published when Louis was just twenty-one—follows the life of a gay youth in a small, poor factory town in northern France. Based on Louis's own life, the novel details the cruelty hurled at Eddy—by his neighbors, peers, and especially his own family—for his homosexuality: slurs, beatings, taunts, gossip. But while Eddy's bullies and family are no sympathetic figures, the novel is as much about the systematic oppression that Eddy's village faces as it is about their homophobia. The novel is full of bracing anecdotes of the indignities of poverty: Eddy's family bathing in the same tub to save water; Eddy begging the grocer to extend their credit so they could eat dinner; Eddy's father breaking his back at his factory job and losing the family's sole source of income. The cruelty, ...