French Author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday.
Gatekeepers News reports that Ernaux, 82, was honoured “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”, the jury said.
Ernaux is known for her deceptively simple novels drawing on personal experiences of class and gender
Ernaux in an interview called it a “very great honour” and “a great responsibility”.
Ernaux is the pioneer of France’s “autofiction” genre, which gives narrative form to real-life experience.
Her more than 20 books, many of which have been school texts in France for decades, offer one of the most subtle, insightful windows into the social life of modern France.
“In her writing, Ernaux consistently and from different angles, examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class”, the Swedish Academy noted.
“Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean”, it said.
“And when she with great courage and clinical acuity reveals the agony of the experience of class, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy or inability to see who you are, she has achieved something admirable and enduring”.
The chairman of the Nobel Committee, Anders Olsson, said Ernaux had “been under consideration for her books for many years”.
“We have had very intensive discussions about her”, he told the Swedish news agency TT.
She debuted with the novel “Cleaned Out” in 1974, a cool-eyed but a harrowing account of an abortion she went through in her youth and that she had kept secret from her family.
However it was her fourth book, “A Man’s Place” from 1983 — a dispassionate portrait of her father and the social milieu that formed him — that started her literary breakthrough.
She then went on to write a portrait of her mother in 1987, “A Woman’s Story”, which with “severe brevity” was a “wonderful tribute to a strong woman”, the Academy noted.
Ernaux began receiving recognition Outside France after the English translation of her key 2008 work, “The Years”, was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2019.
In it, Ernaux used family photos as well as scraps of popular culture to recall her life and explore the impact of bigger historical events.
The Nobel Prize comes with a medal and a prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (about $911,400).
Ernaux will receive the Nobel from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prize in his last will and testament.
Last year, the award went to Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah,whose work focuses on the plight of refugees and exile, colonialism and racism.
Ernaux is the 17th woman to win the prestigious prize, out of 119 literature laureates since the first Nobel was awarded in 1901.
The Academy gave the nod to Ernaux, who has in recent years been a strong voice supporting the #MeToo movement.
The movement took longer to take off in France, with the likes of actress Catherine Deneuve initially defending male “gallantry” and men’s right to hit on women.
“In France, we hear so much about our culture of seduction, but it’s not seduction, it’s male domination”, Ernaux has said.
The Nobel season continues on Friday with the highly anticipated Peace Prize, the only Nobel announced in Oslo.
The Economics Prize wraps up the 2022 edition of the awards on Monday, October 10.
