French-born writer annie ernaux was announced this Thursday, October 6, as the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Swedish jury says that the award ceremony focuses on “the courage and clinical acumen with which Ernaux discovers the roots, estrangements and collective restrictions of personal memory.”
Ernaux, 82, has written more than 20 novels and is characterized by a deceptively simple style based on personal experiences of class and gender.
The French writer had been the favorite of 2021, but the award went to Abdulrazak Gurnahwriter born in Tanzania and based in the UK, whose novels speak of the impact of migration on people and societies.
Ernaux’s books, most of them very short, recount events from her life and the lives of those around her.
Ernaux presents portraits of sexual encounters, abortions, illnesses, and they talk a lot about the death of their parents.
When the writer has spoken of her texts, she has always described them as of a “flat” style, objective descriptions of events, trying not to mold the narratives with flowery descriptions or emotions that overwhelm the reader.
Books by the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature that it is recommended to read
The book that made her famous was, without a doubt, “La Place” (The place of a man), in which she talks about her relationship with her father.
His most acclaimed publication, meanwhile, was “Los años” (“the années“), which was published in 2008 and which describes her and French society from the end of World War II to the present day.
Unlike previous publications, in “Les Années”, the French writer speaks of her in the third person. The book won dozens of awards around the world.
His first work was “The Empty Closets”, written in 1974.
There he recounted the abortion of a 20-year-old girl in a university residence.
Several years later, in 2000, he wrote “The Event”, a book that was made into a film in 2021 and won numerous awards.
Ernaux also wrote another book highly recommended by critics: “The Shame” (“Tusquets”), which tells the story of her family from a day when she, at the age of 12, saw how her father tried to kill her mother.
Of the 118 literature prizes awarded by the Swedish academy since its creation in 1901, European or American authors have received 95 times.
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