On a bone-chilling evening in early January, the bestselling writer Édouard Louis is nursing a rum hot toddy and sitting exactly where he has wanted to be for most of his life – at a discreet table at Le Select, one of the most famous literary cafes on the Left Bank in Paris. “I feel at home here,” says Louis, as I express mild surprise at his choice of venue, having expected the young iconoclast (he is 32) to favour the more fashionable drinking dens of the Bastille or Marais districts. “I know it is old-fashioned,” he continues, “but that is why I like this cafe. It is like a monument to French literature. Everybody has been here, and writers, publishers and politicians still come so it is also part of the present. It is a place where I can meet friends easily and connect with the world.” I tell him that I once saw Patti Smith at a nearby table, wolfing down Le Select’s famous (and highly alcoholic) baba au rhum all on her own and he laughs. “You wouldn’t see that in many other places,” he says. Another reason he likes it is that he lives nearby, plus there are so many famous customers that he is unlikely to be noticed or bothered by fans.
For these days Louis is a public figure in France, easily recognisable from his frequent appearances in the French media, in publications such as Les Inrockuptibles, the bible of French hipsters. He guest-edited the magazine and appeared on the cover not long ago, confirming his status as a cultural avatar moving in the coolest of Parisian circles. This was yet another moment of triumph for a young writer who exploded on to the literary scene 10 years ago with The End of Eddy, a novel based on his working-class origins in northern France – searing, sometimes brutal autofiction in the vein of Annie Ernaux or Karl Ove Knausgaard.
