When she was in her twenties, Annie Ernaux wrote in her diary: “I will write to avenge my people.” When she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in her eighties, she explained what she meant: “I proudly and naively believed that writing books, becoming a writer, as the last in a line of landless labourers, factory workers and shopkeepers, people despised for their manners, their accent, their lack of education, would be enough to redress the social injustice linked to social class at birth,” she said in her acceptance speech in December 2022.
Ernaux, now 82, was awarded the prize for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. France has had more Nobel literature laureates than any other country. Ernaux is the 16th French winner – and the first French woman.
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