The winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature is the 82-year-old Frenchwoman Annie Ernaux, author of “Os anos” and “O eventos”, both published this year in Portugal by the Porto Editora group.
The Swedish Academy jury justified the decision “by the courage and clinical insight with which [Annie Ernaux] reveals the roots, the indifferences and the collective limitations of personal memory”.
The French writer was born in 1940 and grew up in Yvetot, Normandy, where her parents ran a grocery store and cafe. Her path towards authorial creation was long and arduous.
In her writings, Ernaux examines from different angles a life marked by stark disparities of gender, language, and class. Despite her classic style, the author calls herself “an etymologist of her own,” rather than a fiction writer.
The ambition to break the mold of fiction led her to methodically attempt to piece together her past, in an autobiographical tone that the Swedish Academy describes as “crude prose in diary form”.
“She is a very peculiar author because she writes about herself, about her life, about her history, as if she were a fictional character. She looks for real events in her life and turns them into novels,” explains José Mário Silva, critic of the newspaper Expresso, in statements to TSF.
Marked by a “strong social conscience”, many of Annie Ernaux’s books also start from “the assumption that someone was born into poverty and only later managed to achieve another social status later in life”.
“She is an absolutely luminous and extraordinary author. She is a great Nobel laureate”, considers José Mário Silva.
The name of Annie Ernaux was mentioned again as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature after the publication of her novel “L’événement” (“The Event”), which narrates the anguish of a young French student forced to have an abortion. clandestine, in 1964, a narrative based on her own experience.
She has already been distinguished with the French Language Prize (2008), the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize (2017), the Formentor Prize for Letters (2019) and the Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize (2021) for all her work.
“A Place in the Sun” (1984), winner of the Renaudot Prize, and “The Years” (2008), winner of the Marguerite Duras Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize, are among Ernaux’s best-known works.
In the announcement of the Nobel, the secretary of the Swedish Academy indicated that until now it has not been possible to contact the French writer to communicate the award of the prize.
The 2022 season of the call for the Nobel Prizes began last Monday, with that of Medicine, and ends this Friday with that of Peace.
The Nobel Peace Prize ceremony takes place on December 10 in Oslo, Norway, where the laureates receive the prize, which consists of a medal and a diploma, together with a document confirming the monetary amount of the prize, whose year is SEK 10 million (approximately €919,000 at current exchange rates) to be divided among the various categories.
Source: TSF
