As a fan of Annie Ernaux I was delighted to read that she was the 2022 Nobel Prize Laureate for literature.
The Swedish Committee selected Annie Ernaux for the Nobel Prize for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory
Among her novels are ‘A Man’s Place’, ‘A Woman’s Story’ and ‘Years’.
Ernaux’s work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean. And when she with great courage and clinical acuity reveals the agony of the experience of class, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy or inability to see who you are, she has achieved something admirable and enduring.
In her Nobel Lecture Ernaux said:
Writing in a democratic country, however, I continue to wonder about the place women occupy in the literary field. They have not yet gained legitimacy as producers of written works. There are men in the world, including the Western intellectual spheres, for whom books written by women simply do not exist; they never cite them. The recognition of my work by the Swedish Academy is a sign of hope for all female writers.
To read her entire lecture click here.
I am always excited when a new book of hers is out on the market. Her latest book Getting Lost, is the diary she kept while she was having an affair with a married Soviet diplomat and which she wrote about in her biography/memoir Simple Passion.
Annie Ernaux writes beautifully about passion, love, pain, mourning and shame.
For more on her and her books click here.
Carol Balawyder 