Ernaux told Swedish television SVT that this award is “a great honor” for her, but also a great “responsibility”.
“I consider that it is a great honor for me and for me it is at the same time a great responsibility to receive the Nobel Prize,” said the laureate, alluding to a need to “witness justice to the world.”
Ernaux, whose name has been circulating for years among the potential winners of the prestigious award, is the 17th woman to obtain it, among the 119 laureates since the award was established in 1901.
Who is Annie Ernaux?
Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux lived until the age of 18 in her parents’ “dirty, ugly” café-shop in Yvetot, Haute-Normandie (northern France), an environment she emerged from thanks to a professorship in Modern Letters she obtained after intense intellectual work.
With her crystalline prose, Annie Ernaux was one of the favorites in literary circles, but she says that this award has been a big “surprise”.
“Her work is uncompromising, and is written in simple, clean language,” stressed academic Anders Olsson in his presentation of the Nobel Prize winner’s work.
His latest book, “Le jeune homme,” appeared in early May at Gallimard, his longtime publisher.
What do the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature receive?
The prize is endowed with 10 million crowns (about 911,000 dollars).
Last year, the award went to the British author of Tanzanian origin Abdulrazak Gurnah, for his work on refugees, colonialism and racism.