The End of Eddy is an instance of what is sometimes called autofiction, which has been the source of some of the most interesting English-language fiction of the past decade. There is a long tradition of such writing, especially in French, and queer writers are central to it: behind all such novels lies the example of Proust; the works of the French novelist Hervé Guibert and the American Edmund White are more recent precursors of Louis’s book.
The novel is dedicated to the sociologist Didier Eribon, whom Louis met as a university student. Eribon’s memoir, Returning to Reims, also recounts a gay man’s trajectory from provincial poverty to academic prestige.
– From Growing Up Poor and Queer in a French Village by Garth Greenwell