Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux, née Duchesne, was born to a working-class family in Lillebonne, in Normandy, France, and grew up in Yvetot. She attended a private Catholic school and then went for primary teacher training in Rouen. Later she studied modern literature at the universities of Rouen and Bordeaux, graduating in 1971.

In the early 1970s, she passed the agrégation (state teaching exam) and taught at the College of Évire in Annecy-le-Vieux and other schools before joining the Centre national d'enseignement à distance (National Center for Distance Learning).

In 1974, she began her literary career with Les Armoires vides (Cleaned Out), an autobiographical novel. In 1984, she won the Prix Renaudot for another autobiographical work about her father, La Place (A Man's Place). Other works have explored her life experiences and those of her parents over four decades, such as her adolescence, marriage, passionate affair, abortion, death of her mother, and breast cancer. Her historical memoir Les Années (The Years, 2008) is considered by many to be her magnum opus. Les Années won the 2008 Prix Françoise-Mauriac of the Académie française, the 2008 Prix Marguerite Duras, and the 2016 Premio Strega Europeo Prize, among others.
Her 2016
book Mémoire de fille (A Girl’s Story) recounts her early life.

In 2022 she was the winner of the Nobel prize for Literature