French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”, the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.
The 82-year-old started out writing autobiographical novels, but quickly abandoned fiction in favour of memoirs.
Her more than 20 books, most of them very short, chronicle events in her life and the lives of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.
BREAKING NEWS:
The 2022 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the French author Annie Ernaux “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.” pic.twitter.com/D9yAvki1LL— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2022
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Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, said Ernaux’s work is often “uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean”.
“She has achieved something admirable and enduring,” he told reporters after the announcement in Stockholm, Sweden.
Ernaux describes her style as “flat writing” (ecriture plate), a very objective view of the events she is describing, unshaped by florid description or overwhelming emotions.
This year’s #NobelPrize laureate in literature Annie Ernaux has said that writing is a political act, opening our eyes for social inequality. For this purpose she uses language as “a knife”, as she calls it, to tear apart the veils of imagination. pic.twitter.com/TQm6rxjvMp
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2022
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In the book that made her name, La Place (A Man’s Place), about her relationship with her father, she writes: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”
Her most critically acclaimed book was The Years (Les Annees), published in 2008 and describing herself and wider French society from the end of the Second World War to the present day.
Unlike in previous books, in The Years, Ernaux writes about herself in the third person, calling her character “she” rather than “I”. The book received numerous awards and honours.
The 2022 #NobelPrize laureate in literature Annie Ernaux believes in the liberating force of writing. Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean. pic.twitter.com/la80uMiSa8
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 6, 2022
Last year’s prize went to Tanzanian-born, UK-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies.
Gurnah was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa, and the prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers. It is also male-dominated, with just 16 women among its 118 laureates.
The prizes to Gurnah in 2021 and US poet Louise Gluck in 2020 helped the literature prize move on from years of controversy and scandal.
In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee, and sparked an exodus of members.
The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 literature award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.
