How Three European Authors Are Reinventing Political Literature

At Literary Hub, Ane Farsethas reports on three superstars of Europe's political, literary milieu: Athena Farrokhzad, Yahya Hassan, and Edouard Louis. Learn more:

A new generation of young European writers is reinventing political literature—and people are listening. Some of the brightest new voices on the continent are making their names through overtly political books, showing that literature, even books of poetry, can still play a significant role in shaping public discourse. This story begins in 2013, with the publication of four books in a short period of time.

In France, Édouard Louis (born 1992) ignited an intense debate on class and inequality with a book about the violence he suffered growing up gay in a working class family (read Louis on the violence of his family, here, via Freeman’s Journal). Finishing Off Eddy Bellegueule, written when Louis was 19, has, to date, sold more than 250,000 copies in France alone. In Denmark, a book of poems by the even younger Yahya Hassan (born 1995), detailing his life as the child of Palestinian immigrants, has remained at the center of public debate for two years, selling 100,000 copies. In Sweden, one of the leading public intellectuals is Athena Farrokhzad (born 1983), an award-winning poet and critic who turned an otherwise harmless summer radio show into a cause celebre after a member of parliament declared her broadcast “a threat to democracy.” Her breakthrough book, White Blight, has just been translated into English.

Albert Camus’s Mersault famously killed an Arab on the beach 70 years ago. As Yahya Hassan, Finishing Off Eddy Bellegueule and White Blight were being picked up by more and more readers, the story of L’Etranger was turned upside down by Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, who published his homage (or rebuke?) to Camus, The Mersault Investigation that same year. A new Europe is taking form in literature, one that reflects the continent’s diversity, and the growing pains that come along with it. This new generation of writers is reshaping the old idea of the artist as political activist, this time with a social media twist.

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