French author Annie Ernaux wins Nobel Prize for Literature: Here're key facts you must know about 82-year-old writer

French author Annie Ernaux is known for her deceptively simple novels drawing on personal experience of class and gender. The winner of the Nobel Prize in literature was announced on Thursday at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Last year’s prize went to the Tanzanian-born, UK-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies.
annie nobel

Annie Ernaux has written more than 20 books. (Illustration: Twitter/@NobelPrize)

Stockholm: French author Annie Ernaux has won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. The 82-year-old Ernaux is known for her deceptively simple novels drawing on personal experience of class and gender.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in literature was announced on Thursday at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

Here are the key facts about Annie Ernaux:

> Born in 1940, Ernaux grew up in the small town of Yvetot in Normandy, where her parents had a combined grocery store and café.
> She started out writing autobiographical novels, but quickly abandoned fiction in favour of memoirs.
> Her debut was Les armoires vides (1974; Cleaned Out, 1990), and already in this work she started her investigation of her Norman background, but it was her fourth book, La place (1983; A Man’s Place, 1992), that delivered her literary breakthrough.
> She has written more than 20 books. Of these, most are very short, chronicle events in her life and the lives of those around her. They present uncompromising portraits of sexual encounters, abortion, illness and the deaths of her parents.
> In the book that made her name, 'La Place' (A Man's Place), about her relationship with her father, she writes: "No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally."
> Her most critically acclaimed book was 'The Years' (Les annees). Published in 2008, she descibed herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the present day. In this book, Ernaux wrote about herself in the third person, calling her character 'she' rather than 'I'. The book received numerous awards and honours.
Last year’s prize went to the Tanzanian-born, UK-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies.
A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.
Three scientists -- Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger -- jointly won the prize in physics Tuesday.
On Wednesday, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Americans Carolyn R Bertozzi and K Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way of ‘snapping molecules together’ that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs that can target diseases such as cancer more precisely.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.
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