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French author Annie Ernaux wins 2022 Nobel Prize for literature

Annie Ernaux's name has been circulating in Nobel speculation for several years. She is the 17th woman to win the prestigious prize, out of 119 literature laureates since the first Nobel was awarded in 1901

FP Staff Last Updated: October 06, 2022 17:24:10 IST

French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2022. Twitter/@NobelPrize

Stockholm: French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2022 for “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”, the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.

Ernaux, 82, is known for her deceptively simple novels drawing on personal experience of class and gender. She started out writing autobiographical novels, but soon abandoned fiction in favor of memoirs.

“In her writing, Ernaux consistently and from different angles, examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class. Her path to authorship was long and arduous,” the jury said.

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The Nobel Prize comes with a medal and a prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor.

Notably, Ernaux’s name has been circulating in Nobel speculation for several years. She is the 17th woman to win the prestigious prize, out of 119 literature laureates since the first Nobel was awarded in 1901.

Ernaux will receive the Nobel from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.

She has written more than 20 books, most of them very short, and chronicle events in her life and of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.

Her debut was Les armoires vides (1974; Cleaned Out, 1990).

Last year, the award went to Tanzanian-born novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose work focuses on the plight of refugees and exile, colonialism and racism.

The award was postponed in 2018 after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 literature award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.

With inputs from agencies

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