Publisher's Synopsis
<p><b>The radical and urgent new novel from the author of <i>The End of Eddy</i></b><br><i><br>I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012. I was going home after a meal with friends, at around four in the morning. He approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had come to France, having fled Algeria. </i><br><i><br>We spent the rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me, strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings began.</i><br><i><br>History of Violence </i>retraces the story of that night, and looks at immigration, dispossession, racism, misery, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand, and to outline a history of violence, its origins, its reasons and its causes.</p>
