The French literary phenomenon focuses on his father’s story, in an exploration of different forms of machismo There is a kind of privilege that consists of being more or less unaffected by politics. This, the French literary phenomenon Édouard Louis writes, “is what separates some populations, whose lives are supported, nurtured, protected, from other populations, who are exposed to death, to persecution, to murder”. Like his previous books The End of Eddy and History of Violence , this short work tackles the intersections of class, gender and sexuality in contemporary France, but instead of relating his own experiences, Louis gives voice to the way the cruel, crude hegemony of masculinity has essentially destroyed his father’s life, making him “as much a victim of the violence” he inflicted as of the violence he endured. The body politic has, as ever, an unrelenting impact on the bodies of the poor. The question of the title, Who Killed My Father? , is not to be taken literally;