History of Violence
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
** Shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award **
The radical, urgent new novel from the author of The End of Eddy - a personal and powerful story of violence.
I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria.
We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began.
History of Violence retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, class, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes.
'It stays with you' Times
'A heartbreaking novel' John Boyne
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this moving autobiographical novel, Louis (The End of Eddy) lightly fictionalizes his own rape and attempted murder in brutal detail. Late on Christmas Eve in Paris, douard picks up Reda, a son of a Berber immigrant, on the street and takes him back to his apartment. After the two have sex, douard's accurate accusation of theft enrages Reda, who strangles him with a scarf and rapes him at gunpoint. The novel takes the form of a lengthy monologue by douard's sister, Clara, recounting the event to her husband after douard returns to the stifling unnamed northern French village of his childhood in an attempt to cope with his trauma. In the midst of Clara's tale, douard interjects additions, highlighting the pressure from his friends to report the attack to the police and his contradictory urges to talk about it and remain silent. Official systems fail to help: the police are dismissively racist and casually homophobic and doctors are cold and robotic. The unresolved conclusion, with no sense that justice has been served, heightens the horror. Louis's visceral story captures the overwhelming emotional impact and complicated shame of surviving sexual assault.
