Annie Ernaux, a French writer, is awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

• The 82-year-old French writer Annie Ernaux has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in literature.
• Ernaux is known for works that blur the line between memoir and fiction.
• Her first book, Cleaned Out, was an autobiographical novel about obtaining an abortion.

Annie Ernaux, a French writer, has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. The 82-year-old author is well-known for works that straddle the line between memoir and fiction.

The committee cited her “clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory” in making the announcement. During his announcement, the permanent secretary also mentioned that they had been unable to contact Ernaux to inform her of the win.

Ernaux was born in France in 1940. Cleaned Out, her first book, was published in 1974 and was an autobiographical novel about obtaining an abortion while it was still illegal in France. She wrote the book undercover. “After my first manuscript, my husband made fun of me,” she told the New York Times in 2020. “I pretended to work on a Ph.D. thesis in order to have some alone time.”

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In 1990, the book was translated into English.

At the announcement press conference, Anders Olsson, chair of the Nobel committee for literature, was asked if there was a political motivation for awarding the prize to someone who has written so personally about abortion. Olsson declined, stating that the committee is concerned with literature and literary quality. Having said that, “It is also critical for us that the laureate’s work has a global impact. That it has the potential to reach everyone.”

Ernaux published The Years, which many critics saw as her defining statement, after decades of excavating her own past in various works. The Years, first published in 2008, was a comprehensive look at the society that gave birth to her.

Ernaux avoided using the pronoun “I” in favour of a broader “we,” or sometimes “she,” in her examination of each year of her life from 1940 to 2006.

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