Please share articles using the top or side share buttons. Sharing copied content violates FT.com’s T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Buy more rights at licensing@ft.com. Gift article service lets subscribers share 10-20 articles every month. https://www.ft.com/tour has more details. https://www.ft.com/content/8e5ed890-b28d-4d8f-9613-b2a9b4f6d938 Annie Ernaux, a French novelist noted for exploring female sexuality, earned the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Nobel committee cited Ernaux’s “courage and clinical clarity” in uncovering the foundations, estrangements, and communal constraints of personal memory.
Committee chair Anders Olsson remarked, “Her output continually investigates a life defined by gender, language, and socioeconomic differences.”
1940-born Ernaux has published 23 novels in 36 languages. She often writes about her personal experiences and is considered a pioneer of autofiction, or autobiographical books.
Macron praised the author’s admission into “French literature’s magnificent circle of Nobel” winners. Annie Ernaux has been writing our nation’s communal and personal memories for 50 years, he tweeted. Her voice is the century’s lost freedom.
Les armoires vides (Cleaned Out), based on Ernaux’s abortion at 23, launched her career. In 1984, she won France’s second-most prestigious award, the Renaudot, for a picture of her father.
The book marked her adoption of “écriture plate” or flat writing. Sociologist Isabelle Charpentier called her technique “auto-socio-biography” Please share articles using the top or side share buttons. Sharing copied content violates FT.com’s T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Buy more rights at licensing@ft.com. Gift article service lets subscribers share 10-20 articles every month. https://www.ft.com/tour has more details. https://www.ft.com/content/8e5ed890-b28d-4d8f-9613-b2a9b4f6d938 Les années, a six-decade autobiographical epic, was nominated for the 2019 International Man Booker award.
Mémoire de fille (A Girl’s Story) recounts her sexual experiences in 1958. Le jeune homme (The Young Guy) recalls her encounter with a man 30 years her younger.
Ernaux is a towering presence in French literature, influencing a generation of female writers. She’s impacted other French authors like Edouard Louis, a working-class “defector” like her.
Her writings are now classics, but for years she was criticised for being too coarse in her portrayals of personal and terrible situations, earning her the nickname “Madame Ovary.”
Some of the replies were sexist. “French literature is male-dominated. Men control all awards. People think I have legitimacy now, but I had to wait until I was 50, she stated in 2020.
