Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 and is one of France’s greatest contemporary writers. Many of her works have become classics in France in their own right, as well as being translated into several languages and published across the world.

Ernaux was born in the town of Yvetot in Normandy to parents who owned a grocery store. Her humble background and family life are the subject of many of her books, including A Man’s Place (La Place), which talks about Ernaux’s father’s life story, his long working life, and his relationship with his daughter. I Remain in Darkness (Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit) is similarly intimate and poignant, charting the progression of Ernaux’s mother’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Many of Ernaux’s novels are autobiographical, and she speaks with extreme sensitivity and intimacy about her own life. A Girl’s Story (Mémoire de fille), for example, recounts her experiences of the summer of 1958 and her first relationship, but from the perspective of Ernaux looking back on those years. Similarly, The Happening (L’Événement) looks back on a traumatic moment in Ernaux’s life; when she becomes pregnant with a baby she cannot keep. This unique perspective, that of a woman reflecting so deeply on her own past, is part of what makes reading Annie Ernaux’s work such a moving and thought-provoking experience.

For many, Annie Ernaux’s defining work is The Years (Les Années), first published in English in 2018. The Years has won numerous awards, including the Prix Marguerite-Duras in 2008, and the Premio Strega of European Literature in 2016. The novel brings together the themes of much of Ernaux’s previous work, reflecting on over sixty years of history between 1941 and 2006. Ernaux looks at cultural events, literature, radio, television and the news through her own subjective memory and experiences of living through those events. This creates a unique literary genre, resembling autobiography, history, sociology and fiction all at once, and all done within Ernaux’s signature sensitive and introspective writing style.

Simple Passion (Passion simple) is the most recent of Ernaux’s novels to be published in English translation. In this novel, Ernaux uses her own experiences to explore the nature of human love and passion, and finding oneself living life for somebody else.

All of Annie Ernaux’s works draw on her own life, and yet explore themes which are relevant to us all. Her writing is sensitive, contemporary and revolutionary, and her work goes outside the confines of genre. In fact, she has created a whole genre of her own, establishing her as one of France’s great contemporary authors.