Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux is a French writer born in 1940 in Lillebonne, Normandy. She grew up in the working-class town of Yvetot, where her parents ran a café and grocery store, and studied at the universities of Rouen and Bordeaux, qualifying as a schoolteacher. Beginning her literary career in 1974, she shifted to autobiography, blending personal memory with sociological insights in works exploring class, family, sexuality, and French society. Notable books include La Place (A Man's Place, 1983, Prix Renaudot winner), Une Femme (A Woman's Story, 1988), Les Années (The Years, 2008, her acclaimed magnum opus), and Mémoire de fille (A Girl's Story, 2016). Several works have been adapted into films, most notably Happening (2021). In 2022, Ernaux received the Nobel Prize in Literature 'for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory,' becoming the first Frenchwoman to win the award.