2014 : Pierre Guénin Prize against homophobia and for equal rights, for his work En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule.François Caillat (editor), Édouard Louis (director), avec Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Arlette Farge, Didier Eribon, ( Presses Universitaires de France, 2014 ISBN 978-2-13-063289-4). Foucault contre lui-même = 'Foucault against himself'.L'insoumission en héritage, Édouard Louis (editor), Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, Arlette Farge, Frédéric Lordon, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie et Frédéric Lebaron, ( Presses Universitaires de France, 2013 ISBN 978-2-13-061935-2). A Woman's Battles and Transformations.

Louis has said that his primary contemporary influence was French sociologist Didier Eribon, whose book Returning to Reims, Louis says 'marked a turning point for his future as a writer.' He has also included James Baldwin and Simone de Beauvoir amongst 'the writers who have meant the most to me'. The author says that, by working with various levels of language, he wants to use violence as a literary subject, 'I want to make violence a literary space, like Marguerite Duras made a literary space of madness or as Claude Simon made war into a literary space, or as Hervé Guibert did with sickness.' Louis' novel Histoire de la violence contains an essay on Faulkner's novel Sanctuary. The influence of William Faulkner is also revealed through Louis' superposition in the same sentence of various levels of language – placing the popular vernacular at the heart of his writing. The work of Édouard Louis maintains a fine link with sociology: the influence of Pierre Bourdieu pervades his novels, which invoke the themes of social exclusion, domination, and poverty. He explores the deteriorating health of his father, who had been severely injured in an industrial accident, and the additional bodily harm he endures as a result of political decisions that reduced his financial support and forced him back to work. In May 2018, Louis released his third novel, Qui a tué mon père ( Who Killed My Father), in which he expands upon this theme. In the piece, published on the eve of the French presidential election, Louis argued that the rise in popularity of nationalist and right-wing politicians among working class and poor voters in France was a result of changing priorities on the left. In May 2017 Louis wrote 'Why My Father Votes for Le Pen', an op-ed that was published on the front page of The New York Times. In recounting the story of his rape and attempted murder on Christmas Eve of 2012, the autobiographical novel centers around the cyclical and self-perpetuating nature of violence in society. In 2016, Louis published his second novel, History of Violence. In the letter, which was published on the front page of Le Monde, and was later reprinted in English by the Los Angeles Review of Books, Louis and Lagasnerie denounce the legitimization of right-wing agendas in public discourse and establish principles by which leftist intellectuals should reengage in public debate. In September 2015, Édouard Louis wrote an open letter, 'Manifesto for an Intellectual and Political Counteroffensive', together with philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie. It was a bestseller in France and has been translated into more than 20 languages. The book also generated debate and controversy over social perception of the working class. The book was the subject of extensive media attention and was hailed for its literary merit and compelling story.

In 2014 he published En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule, an autobiographical novel. L'insoumission en héritage, which analyses the influence of Pierre Bourdieu on critical thinking and political emancipation. The same year, he edited the collective work, Pierre Bourdieu. In 2013, he officially changed his name to Édouard Louis. In 2011, he was admitted to two of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in France, the École Normale Supérieure and to the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He is the first in his family to attend university. The poverty, racism, alcoholism and his homosexuality which he dealt with in his family during his childhood would become the subject of his literary work. His mother found occasional work bathing the elderly.

Louis grew up in a poor family supported by government welfare: his father was a factory worker for a decade until 'One day at work, a storage container fell on him and crushed his back, leaving him bedridden, on morphine for the pain' and unable to work. Édouard Louis, born Eddy Bellegueule was born and raised in the town of Hallencourt in northern France, which is the setting of his first novel, the autobiographical En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule (2014 published in English in 2018 as The End of Eddy).

Edouard louis