ERNAUX
Annie

• 1. Literary career

Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux is a French writer, professor of literature and Nobel laureate. Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology. Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory".

Literary career

Ernaux started her literary career in 1974 with Les Armoires vides (Cleaned Out), an autobiographical novel. In 1984, she won the Renaudot Prize for another of her works La Place (A Man's Place), an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, and her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her parents' place of origin.

Early in her career, Ernaux turned from fiction to focus on autobiography. Her work combines historic and individual experiences. She charts her parents' social progression (La place, La honte), her teenage years (Ce qu'ils disent ou rien), her marriage (La femme gelée), her passionate affair with an Eastern European man (Passion simple), her abortion (L'événement), Alzheimer's disease (Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit), the death of her mother (Une femme), and breast cancer (L'usage de la photo). Ernaux also wrote L'écriture comme un couteau (Writing as Sharp as a Knife) with Frédéric-Yves Jeannet.

A Woman's Story, A Man's Place, and Simple Passion were recognised as The New York Times Notable Books, and A Woman's Story was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Shame was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998, I Remain in Darkness a Top Memoir of 1999 by The Washington Post, and The Possession was listed as a Top Ten Book of 2008 by More magazine.

Ernaux's 2008 historical memoir Les Années (The Years), well-received by French critics, is considered by many to be her magnum opus. In this book, Ernaux writes about herself in the third person ('elle', or 'she' in English) for the first time, providing a vivid look at French society just after the Second World War until the early 2000s. It is the story of a woman and of the evolving society she lived in. The Years won the 2008 Prix François-Mauriac de la région Aquitaine, the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize, the 2008 Prix de la langue française, the 2009 Télégramme Readers Prize, and the 2016 Strega European Prize. Translated by Alison L. Strayer, The Years was a finalist for the 31st Annual French-American Foundation Translation Prize, was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2019, and won the 2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Her popularity in anglophone countries increased sharply after The Years was shortlisted for the International Booker.

On 6 October 2022, it was announced that Ernaux would be awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Ernaux is the 16th French writer, and the first Frenchwoman, to receive the literature prize. In congratulating her, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, said that she was the voice "of the freedom of women and of the forgotten".

Many of Ernaux's works have been translated into English and published by Seven Stories Press. Ernaux is one of the seven founding authors from whom the Press takes its name.