French author Annie Ernaux was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in literature for "the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory," the Swedish Academy said Thursday, October 6.
Ms. Ernaux, 82, started out writing autobiographical novels but quickly abandoned fiction in favor of memoirs. Her more than 20 books, most of them very short, chronicle events in her life and the lives of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.
Anders Olsson, the chairman of the Nobel Committee for literature, said Ms. Ernaux's work was often "uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean."
"She has achieved something admirable and enduring," he told reporters after the announcement in Stockholm, Sweden. Ms. Ernaux describes her style as "flat writing," a very objective view of the events she is describing, unshaped by florid description or overwhelming emotions.
Interviewed on Swedish television immediately after the announcement, Ms. Ernaux called it a "very great honor" and "a great responsibility".
Neutral style
In the book that made her name, A Man’s Place, about her relationship with her father, she writes: "No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally."
Her most critically acclaimed book is The Years, published in 2008. She describes herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the present day. Unlike in previous books, in The Years, Ms. Ernaux writes about herself in the third person, calling her character "she" rather than "I." The book received numerous awards and honors.
A feminist icon for generations in France and beyond, Annie Ernaux described herself to French news agency AFP earlier this year as "a woman who writes – that's all". She was speaking in Cannes where she was presenting The Super 8 Years, a documentary drawn from home videos of her family life during the decade that made her one of the leading voices in French literature.
The recordings were made between 1972 and 1981 by her ex-husband, now deceased, and show Ms. Ernaux torn between married bourgeois living, and her burgeoning calling as a writer. "These 10 years were the crucial years of my life because they confirmed my desire to write," she told AFP.
"And also because I gained my freedom. I suffered without that freedom, even if I was in a loving marriage. It is the story of my life but also that of thousands of women who have also been in search of freedom and emancipation."
The French writer published her first novel "Cleaned Out" in 1974 – a harrowing account of an abortion that she kept secret from her family. She divorced in 1984 and raised her sons alone.
The Super 8 Years was Ms. Ernaux's directing debut, but her books have long served other filmmakers.
The Happening, based on another account of her abortion, won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival. The same year also saw an adaptation of her romance Simple Passion, as well as a documentary, I Have Loved Living Here, about new towns in France that uses her writings as a voiceover.
The Happening proved very timely, released just as the United States Supreme Court reversed its ruling on abortions, allowing them to once again be criminalized.
Ms. Ernaux was not shocked. "One could expect this conservative wave, because when women take power – or when their voices are elevated – men close ranks with each other," she said.
But she was pleased to see the impact of the film, since the original book, published in 2000, "didn't make many waves at the time of its release when feminism was in a dip".
Though many would argue otherwise, she does not see herself as an icon. "I'm just a woman, a woman who writes – that's all," she said. She rejoices, however, at the wave of feminism triggered by MeToo and other movements.
"Women are no longer willing to let things happen to them," she said. She spoke of her "real joy" at this new generation of activists. "When the political scene is not too joyful, one thing that gives life, that pushes the boundaries, is feminism."