John Adoyi, PBA Journalism Mentee
The 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to 82-year-old French author, Annie Ernaux.
Making the announcement on Thursday in Stockholm, Sweden, the committee for Literature said the prize was given to the author “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”
Annie Ernaux now becomes the 16th French author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ernaux was born in 1940 and grew up in Normandy France. She studied at Rouen University. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance.
Her first book was released in 1974 and was titled Les Armoires vides (“Cleaned Out”), an autobiographical novel.
Ernaux whose books are majorly seen as memoir, details her past experiences as someone who has gone through divorce and someone who has had extramarital affairs in the past.
Authors and readers of her books praise her for putting people first and everyday experiences in her book and she is also seen as a feminist writer because of her books that have talked about abortion.
The chairman of the Nobel committee, Anders Olsson, praising the French author for her collection of works said “Ernaux consistently and from different angles, examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language, and class.”
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“Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean,” he continued. “And when she with great courage and clinical acuity reveals the agony of the experience of class, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy or inability to see who you are, she has achieved something admirable and enduring,” Olsson said.
Ernaux’s work was first published in English by Seven Stories Press in the United States. Her famous books include La Place (“A Man’s Place”, 1983), L’événement (“Happening”, 2000), L’Occupation (“The Possession”, 2002), and Les Années (“The Years”, 2008).
One hundred and fifteen Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since 1901 and 17 women have been awarded the literature prize so far.
Last year, the prize was awarded to an African, the Tanzanian author, Abdulrazaq Gurnah, for “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”
This year’s prize is worth 10 million Swedish kroner (about $908,000), a medal and a diploma would also be given to the winners at a gala dinner in December.
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