French writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature for “courage and clinical acumen” in her largely autobiographical books.
The 82-year-old author – the first French woman to win the world-renowned literature award – saw her first novel Les Armoires Vides published in 1974 (in English it was called Cleaned Out), and La Place (A Man’s Place), the book that made his name, released in 1983.
She gained international recognition following the 2008 publication of The Years, which was translated into The Years in 2017, and an adaptation of her 2000 novel Happening – about her experiences with abortion while it was still illegal in France in the 1960s – won Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021.
Coming from a family of grocers from Normandy in the north of the country, Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time author.
Known for her frank and direct style on class and her struggle to adopt the codes and habits of the French bourgeoisie while remaining faithful to her working class milieu, she has published more than 20 books.
The Nobel Prizes for Achievement in Science, Literature and Peace were created at the behest of Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.
Announcing this year’s literary laureate, the Swedish Academy said that Ernaux “coherently and from different angles examines a life marked by stark disparities in gender, language and class”, and that his “path towards fatherhood was long and arduous”.
Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Literature, described her as “a supremely honest writer who is not afraid to face hard truths”.
He added: “She writes about things no one else writes about, like her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so on. I mean, really difficult experiences. “
Ernaux told Swedish TV channel SVT: “I was very surprised…I never thought it would be in my landscape as a writer.
“It is a great responsibility…to testify, not necessarily in terms of writing, but to testify accurately and justly in
relation to the world.”
“Her voice is that of women’s freedom”
French President Emmanuel Macron was among those who congratulated her, tweeting: “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of the freedom of women, and of the forgotten of the century. .”
However, Ernaux was not always a fan of him; a supporter of leftist causes for social justice, she despised the president’s background in banking and said his first term had failed to advance the cause of French women.
She becomes only the 17th woman among the 119 winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, winning a cash prize of 10 million Swedish kronor (just over £800,000).
Seven Stories Press, the US publisher of Ernaux for 31 years, said it published the English translation of his most recent book, Getting Lost, just two days before his victory, and was now pressing several of his backlist titles to the ‘impression.
Other Nobel Laureates
The week of Nobel Prize announcements began on Monday, when a Swedish scientist who used DNA sequencing to find the link between missing people and modern humans was received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize on Tuesday for their work showing that tiny particles can maintain a connection with each other even when separated – a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.
The chemistry prize was awarded to Americans Carolyn R Bertozzi and K Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal, for developing a way to “glue molecules together“which can be used to explore cells, map DNA, and design drugs to target cancer and other diseases.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Fridayfollowed by the economy price on Monday.
