The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 was awarded to French author Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.
- The award was announced by Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, on 6 October 2022.
Key points
- Ernaux, née Duchesne, was born in Lillebonne Normandy in 1940.
- She has over thirty literary works published under her name.
- Ernaux, 82, has seen a sharp increase in popularity in the English-speaking world since 2019, after her seminal work ‘The Years’, was shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize.
- Her book on her illegal abortion in the 1960s, ‘Happening’ has also been in the limelight. The book describes the blood and mess commonplace for women, but always labelled “shocking” when such experiences are written about.
- Her ‘A Girl’s Story’ (2016), built on her own experiences at a children’s camp, deals with the shaming an 18-year-old girl is subjected to for her sexuality.
- ‘Getting Lost’ (2022), which talks of her affair with a Russian diplomat – she was divorced, he was married – is a rare clear-eyed account of female desire.
