French writer Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022, this Thursday (06). Ernaux is the author of “Os Anos”, by 2008 (Portuguese version by Fósforo Editora, by 2021), her best-known work, and of other literature titles along the way. over 46 years of writing, deeply connected to her life, although the writer refuses the term “autobiography”.
Aos
years, Ernaux prefers the genre she created, “autosociobiography”: a mix of personal stories with social criticism. According to the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, the prize was awarded “for the courage and clinical acuity with which it uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective constraints of personal memory.”
In the book “O Lugar” , for example, she gives an emotional account after her father’s death, recounting the family’s trajectory linked to the post-war French historical moment. Ernaux observes that her parents’ struggle for her to study and have a better life resulted in a sentimental detachment among them, caused by the intellectual and economic structure of the country.
Ernaux classifies writing as a requirement “that cannot relax.” French journalist Raphaëlle Leyris, from Le Monde, describes Ernaux’s text as an “effort sentence after sentence, book after book, to try to elucidate reality, gain access to understanding and express a truth about existence”.
The writer often uses themes considered unworthy of literature, such as abortion, public transport, supermarkets and others, in addition to dealing with more “noble” subjects, such as time, memory and oblivion.
Born in Yvetot, a small town in Normandy, in 1940, Annie Ernaux is the sixteenth Frenchwoman to receive the award. And, among a hundred men, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to seventeen women since 1901. The first one was Selma Lagerlöf, in 1909, and the last one, this year, for Annie Ernaux.
This time, the amount received by the winners of all the categories is SEK 10 million (in the current direct conversion, around BRL 4.8 million).
A The writer is one of the guests for Flip, the International Literary Fair of Paraty, this year. Annie is expected to attend one of the tables on 26 November.
