The work of Édouard Louis and Sara Stridsberg has become central points of reference in Europe’s contemporary literature. In a style at once raw and tender, they give voice to the most vulnerable among us, depicting disintegrating families, neglected children and abuse, but also love and hope.
The relationship between devotion and absolution, determinism and freedom are recurring themes in their books. How do we carry the love and the violence passed down the generations, and how can we free ourselves from the social structures surrounding us?
In his celebrated family saga, starting with his debut novel The End of Eddy and ending with this year’s publication Collapse, French writer Édouard Louis explores the ambivalence in his relationship to his own family and the wider working class. By telling his own story, and that of his brother, his mother and father, he gives voice to people that tend to stay invisible.
Complicated family histories and explorations of humanity’s darker sides recur in Sara Stridsberg’s poetic novels. There is also an autobiographical thread in novels such as Beckomberga. Her latest novel, Farewell to Panic Beach, tells the story of a discordant family over four generations, in which blinding light, depression and alcoholism follow each other.
Louis’s and Stridsberg’s bodies of work show us how structural violence shapes individual lives, and how love and destructive powers can coexist within the same people, the same families.
Louis and Stridsberg also share a love for the theatre. Several of Louis’s books have been adapted for the stage, and Stridsberg has established herself as a leading playwright in Scandinavia.
They also have a mutual admiration for each other’s writing, and now, they will meet on stage for a conversation about writing, family, absolution and devotion, led by Swedish poet and writer Athena Farrokhzad.
The conversation will be in English.
Édouard Louis will also visit Det Norske Teatret as part of the International Fosse Festival. Read more about their program here.
