French writer Annie Ernaux wins 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

French writer Annie Ernaux has been named the recipient of 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 10 million Swedish kronor (approx. $1.2 million Cdn) prize, which has been given out since 1901, recognizes authors who have “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.” 

At the time of the announcement, the Swedish Academy had not reached Ernaux for comment.

Ernaux will receive the prize, and give the traditional Nobel lecture, at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10.

It will be the first time since 2019 the Nobel Prizes will be awarded in person, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

WATCH | The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature announcement:

Ernaux, 82, is known for fiction largely influenced by her own life. It is also heavily influenced by sociology and revolves around the condition of women, social injustice and the phenomenon of class defectors.

She started out writing autobiographical novels, but quickly abandoned fiction in favour of memoirs.

She published her first novel, Les armoires vides, in 1974, which was published in English in 1990 as Cleaned Out. 

Ernaux has more than 20 books to her credit, including 1983’s La place (published in English as A Man’s Place in 1992), which won her the Prix Renaudot in 1984, and 2008’s Les Années (published in English in 2017 as The Years), won the Prix Marguerite-Duras in 2008.

Her books, most of them 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.

Born on Sept. 1, 1940, Ernaux grew up in the small town of Yvetot in Normandy. Her parents were grocery store clerks. She would go on to study at universities in Rouen and Bordeaux. She would become a teacher before turning to writing. 

Her other influential books include A Woman’s Story, Simple Passion, I Remain in Darkness, Shame and The Possession.

“Annie Ernaux consistently and from different angles, examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class,” the Nobel Prize wrote on Twitter after the announcement.

“With great courage and clinical acuity, Annie Ernaux 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.”

Anders Olsson, chairman, Nobel Committee for literature, said Ernaux’s work was often “uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean.”

“She has achieved something admirable and enduring,” he told reporters after the announcement in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ernaux describes her style as “flat writing” (ecriture plate), a very objective view of the events she is describing, unshaped by florid description or overwhelming emotions.

Her 2000 novel L’Événement was adapted for the cinema by the French director Audrey Diwan.

A prize with recent controversy in its long history

In his will, Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel specifically designated the Swedish Academy as the institution responsible for the Nobel Prize for literature.

The winners are always announced in October and the Nobel Prizes are presented on the Dec. 10 anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

Last year’s winner was Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

Gurnah was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa, and the prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers. It is also male-dominated, with just 16 women among its 118 laureates.

The prizes to Gurnah in 2021 and U.S. poet Louise Glück in 2020 helped the literature prize move on from years of difficulties, controversy and scandal.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 winners lectures and the ceremony were virtual. 

In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners.

The awarding of the 2019 prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke caused protests because of his strong support for the Serbs during the 1990s Balkan wars.

Two Canadians have won the prize in the past: Saul Bellow (a Canadian-born American) in 1976 and Alice Munro in 2013.

Other past winners include American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, Russian historian and essayist Svetlana Alexievich, Irish poet Seamus Heaney and American novelist Toni Morrison.

FILE – A Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020 file photo of a Nobel Prize medal. (AP) Other Nobel Prizes awarded this week

Nobel prizes are also given for chemistry, physics, medicine, peace and economic science.

French scientist Alain Aspect, American physicist John Clauser and Austrian scientist Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize for their work on quantum information science.

The chemistry prize went to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for their work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions, which are used to make cancer drugs, map DNA and create materials that are tailored to a specific purpose.

Sharpless became the fifth person to receive a Nobel prize twice. He previously won in 2001.

Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo received the prize in physiology or medicine for his discoveries on human evolution.

The peace prize recipient will be revealed on Friday, Oct. 7. The economic sciences prize winner will be announced on Oct. 10.

With files from the Associated Press