Annie Ernaux, French writer, wins the Nobel Prize in Literature 2022

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This year, Nobel Prizes seem to love France, and France loves Nobel Prizes! In the wake of the Nobel Prize in Physics granted on 4 October to French researcher Alain Aspect, Annie Ernaux received her Nobel Prize in Literature, an especially honourable prize for France, on 6 October. Annie Ernaux is the first French woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to a writer who “in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction” France can boast counting with 16 laureates of Nobel Prizes in Literature, leader of most awarded countries.

A French feminist figure

Annie Ernaux was awarded the Prize “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory, declared the Nobel communication committee when awarding the Prize. This prize recompenses all her work, which is mostly autobiographical, and her work turned her in a prominent French feminist figure.

When contacted by media in the wake of the announcement, Ernaux expressed “great honour” for her Prize, but also a “great responsibility” that is now hers to continue to show “some sort of justness, justice, with the world”.

An intimate work opening the door to freedom for others

Annie Ernaux, who was among others a teacher in literature at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, wrote about 20 novels as what she calls “impersonal biography”.

And this original form of literature inspired French president Macron, who saluted her achievement on Twitter by saying “for 50 years, Annie Ernaux has written the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is the voice of the freedom of women and forgotten figures of the century”. The tweet of the French ministry of culture felt the same emotion, when she talked about the “crowning of an intimate work that carries the life of others” and shows a “delicate and dense writing that revolutionised literature”.

Inspiring predecessors

The Nobel Prize in Literature tends to be considered as the most prestigious and covered prize. Annie Ernaux now joins 16 prestigious French predecessors who received the prize before her. They include major French writers who became true leading figures of international literature of the 20th century: