Annie Ernaux

File:Annie Ernaux.jpg

Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux (born in Lillebonne, Seine-Maritime on 1 September 1940) is a French writer.

She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, and her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her parents' place of origin.

As a child, Annie Ernaux lived in Yvetot in Normandy. Very early in her career, she turned away from fiction to concentrate on autobiography. Her work combines historic and individual experiences. She charts her parents' social progression (La place, La honte), her adolescence (Ce qu’ils disent ou rien), her marriage (La femme gelée), her passionate affair with an eastern European man ("Simple Passion") her abortion (L’événement), Alzheimer's disease (Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit), the death of her mother (Une femme) and breast cancer (L’usage de la photo). Ernaux also wrote L'écriture comme un couteau (which should be understood as Writing as sharp as a knife) with Frédéric-Yves Jeannet.

Her latest novel Les années (Gallimard, 2008) is considered her 'magnum opus' and was very well received by the French critics. In this latter book Ernaux writes of herself in third person point of view (elle) for the first time. She gives a vivid look at French society from after Second World War until today. It is the poignant social history of a woman and of the society she lived in. The female character in the book has looked death in the eye; she describes what she realizes will soon be disappearing and how relative that all is, if she should disappear too.

Many of her works have been translated into English and published by Seven Stories Press. Ernaux is one of the seven founding authors of the press from which it got its name.

Bibliography

• Les Armoires vides, Paris, Gallimard, 1974; Gallimard, 1984, ISBN 978-2-07-037600-1
• Ce qu’ils disent ou rien, Paris, Gallimard, 1977; French & European Publications, Incorporated, 1989, ISBN 978-0-7859-2655-9
• La Femme gelée, Paris, Gallimard, 1981; French & European Publications, Incorporated, 1987, ISBN 978-0-7859-2535-4
• La Place, Paris, Gallimard, 1983; Distribooks Inc, 1992, ISBN 978-2-07-037722-0
• Une Femme, Paris, Gallimard, 1989
• Passion simple, Paris, Gallimard, 1991; Gallimard, 1993, ISBN 978-2-07-038840-0
• Journal du dehors, Paris, Gallimard, 1993
• La Honte, Paris, Gallimard, 1997
  • Shame, Translator Tanya Leslie, Seven Stories Press, 1998, ISBN 978-1-888363-69-2
• Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit, Paris, Gallimard, 1997
• La Vie extérieure : 1993-1999, Paris, Gallimard, 2000
• L’Événement, Paris, Gallimard, 2000, ISBN 978-2-07-075801-2
• Se perdre, Paris, Gallimard, 2001
• L’Occupation, Paris, Gallimard, 2002
• L’Usage de la photo, with Marc Marie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005
• Les Années, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, ISBN 978-2-07-077922-2
• L'Autre fille, Paris, Nil, 2011 ISBN 978-2-84111-539-6
• L'Atelier noir, Paris, éd. des Busclats, 2011
• Écrire la vie, Paris, Gallimard, 2011.
• Retour à Yvetot, éditions du Mauconduit, 2013.
• Regarde les lumières mon amour, Raconter la vie, 2014.

External links

• Critical bibliography (Auteurs.contemporain.info)