Writer Édouard Louis on injustice in France: "We need a revolution"

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Author Louis: "A certain joy when it burned on the Champs-Élysées"

Photo: 

Christopher Anderson / Magnum Photos / Agency Focus

Louis, 27, is sitting on a café terrace in Montmartre, blue shirt, blue sneakers, light circles under his eyes.

Until recently, he was on stage every evening at the Théâtre des Abbesses next door.

For an hour and a half he quoted from his autobiographical essay "Who killed my father", he danced and sang.

The text is a political manifesto against the prevailing conditions, against President Emmanuel Macron and neoliberalism, radical and uncompromising.

Louis is considered to be one of the most prominent representatives of a new intellectual left.

The writer grew up as the child of a laborer in the poor north of France, later escaped from this milieu, studied in Paris at the école normal supérieure.

In 2014 the then 21-year-old landed a surprise success with his debut novel "The End of Eddy", in which he talks about his childhood and youth.

SPIEGEL:

Mr. Louis, every evening in September you called for the resistance: "What we need now is a good revolution," is the last sentence of your play.

Is that what you really want, a revolution?

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