Why Annie Ernaux got Nobel Prize?

Annie Ernaux is a French writer and literature professor. Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2022 “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.”

Annie Ernaux is the 16th French writer, and the first Frenchwoman, to receive the literature prize.

In congratulating her, President of France Emmanuel Macron said that she was the voice “of the freedom of women and the forgotten”

Annie Ernaux began her literary career in 1974 with the autobiographical novel Les Armoires vides (Cleaned Out).

She received the Renaudot Prize in 1984 for another of her works, La Place (A Man’s Place), an autobiographical narrative about her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, as well as her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her parents’ place of origin.

Seven Stories Press has published many of her works in English translation. Ernaux is one of the seven founding authors whose names the Press bears.