How to Proceed – with Édouard Louis

Our guest in this episode is the French writer Édouard Louis. He talks about writing for your enemies, Black Lives Matter, Toni Morrison and ghosts at the table.

Talking to Louis is the British writer Nadifa Mohamed, one of three guest interviewers as Linn Ullmann takes some time off to finish her novel. You can read more about Mohamed and our two other guest interviewers here.

Music by Kingocito and Sandra Kolstad. Artwork by Julius Vidarssønn Langhoff.

Listen to the episode here:

 

Also check out a bonus reading from Édouard, in which he reads from his book Who Killed My Father:

 

You can read more about Édouard Louis and his publications here, and about Nadifa Mohamed and her publications here.

Want more? In this episode, Édouard Louis and Nadifa Mohamed talked about:

Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy

 – History of Violence

 – Who Killed My Father (check out Louis’s commissioned monologue on our stage, that was the early beginning of his novel)

Simone de Beauvoir

Joyce Carol Oates

Pierre Bourdieu, Esquisse pour une auto-analyse

Gustave Flaubert

Thomas Ostermeier, the star director in whose staging of Who Killed My Father Édouard himself was on stage.

Tash Aw

Toni Morrison (also, be sure to listen to Louis´s beuatiful talk on Toni Morrison’s books given at our stage in 2016)

J. M. G. Le Clézio

Peter Handke, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Wunschloses Unglück)

George Bernhard Shaw, Pygmalion

Zadie Smith

Stendhal, The Red and the Black (Le Rogue et le Noir)

Émile Zola, The Lady’s Delight (Au Bonheur des Dames)

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Nella Larsen, Passing

The character Rastignac (From Honoré de Balzac)

James Kelman

Douglas Stuart

Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims (Retour à Reims)

Assa Traoré, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Le Combat Adama (be sure to check out our podcast from our stage conversation between Louis and de Lagasnerie about Adama Traoré, the yellow vests, bodies and violence)

Jenny Erpenbeck

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter

Marcel Proust

Lana del Rey

Patti Smith

Nina Simone

Diam’s

Jessye Norman

Maria Callas

Arundhati Roy

Edmund White

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?