literature nobel prize 2022

Annie Ernaux’s Work Dissecting the Deeply Personal Is Awarded the Nobel

Ernaux’s writing has spoken particularly to women and to others who, like her, come from a working class seldom depicted with such clarity in literature.

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By Alex Marshall , Alexandra Alter , Laura Cappelle and Aurelien Breeden

Oct. 6, 2022

For decades, the French writer Annie Ernaux has dissected the most humiliating, private and scandalous moments from her past with almost clinical precision: “I shall carry out an ethnological study of myself,” she wrote in her 1997 memoir “Shame.”

On Thursday, she was awarded one of literature’s highest honors, the Nobel Prize, for her body of work. Ernaux’s writing has spoken particularly to women and to others who, like her, come from a working class seldom depicted with such clarity in literature: She has described her upbringing in a small town in Normandy, an illegal abortion she had the 1960s, her dissatisfaction with domestic life, and a passionate extramarital affair.

It was a striking choice by the Nobel committee to honor a writer whose work is woven from intensely personal and often ordinary experiences. Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which decides the prize, announced the decision at a news conference in Stockholm, lauding the “courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”

At a news conference at the Paris offices of her publisher, Gallimard, Ernaux, 82, promised to keep writing. “To receive the Nobel Prize is, for me, a responsibility to continue,” she said.

She felt compelled, in particular, to keep examining the inequality and struggles that women face. “Speaking from my condition as a woman,” she said, “it does not seem to me that we, women, have become equal in freedom, in power.”

Ernaux becomes only the 17th woman to have been awarded the prize, which has been given to 119 writers since it was formed in 1901. She is the second woman to receive the prize in three years after Louise Glück, the American poet, was given 2020’s award .

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France's Ernaux, who long scrutinised self, wins Nobel literature prize

Medium Text
Ernaux is the writer of many largely autobiographical books
Works examine disparities of gender, language, class
Literature award is the fourth of this year's Nobels

'RUTHLESSLY HONEST'

French novelist Annie Ernaux winner of 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature

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A nobel 'badge'.

Reporting by Simon Johnson, Niklas Pollard, and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm, Terje Solsvik in Oslo, and Justyna Pawlak in Warsaw Additional reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm, Elizabeth Pineau, Jean-Michel Belot, Geert De Clercq, Manuel Ausloos and Tassilo Hummel in Paris, Jonathan Allen in New York and Marie Mannes in Gdansk Writing by Justyna Pawlak Editing by Nick Macfie, Frances Kerry and Sandra Maler

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Annie Ernaux wins the Nobel prize in literature for 2022

In her books the french author transmutes the private and the ordinary into something profound.

Portrait of Annie Ernaux (born Annie Duchesne) 06/06/2019 Photograph 1

A NNIE ERNAUX is surely the only winner of the Nobel prize in literature to have written nostalgically—even ecstatically—about the London suburb of North Finchley. Her book of 2016, “A Girl’s Story”, is typical of the French writer’s approach. As the author recounts formative late-teenage experiences in Normandy and as an au pair in London, she blends deeply personal memoir with social and historical insight. Decades later, she returns to the city for a literary event; while her fellow delegates consume culture, she takes the Tube and plunges “back into my past life”. As she writes, “the only thing that matters to me is to seize life and time, understand, and take pleasure.”

Ms Ernaux’s forensic but lyrical French prose has been seizing life and time, and mining literary pleasure from even the most harrowing memories, for almost half a century. On October 6th the Swedish Academy chose her as its Nobel laureate for 2022 “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. She is a prose poet of everyday hopes and fears; she probes how change and conflict affect the most “ordinary” of folk, especially women of supposedly low status. Many of her books channel the life she has led not around Left Bank cafés and salons, but in Cergy-Pontoise, a new and unglamorous suburban town north-west of Paris.

Born in Normandy in 1940, Ms Ernaux’s parents ran a café-grocery. She studied in Rouen and Bordeaux, taught in secondary schools and then, for 23 years, worked for a French distance-learning university, CNED . Her shelf of two-dozen books began with fiction (“Cleaned Out” in 1974) but soon moved into a form of creative autobiography in which rigorous, unsparing accounts of private life enter the flow of shared social experience.

“A Woman’s Story” (1987), a searing account of her mother’s life and death from Alzheimer’s, helped secure her reputation in France. The injustices of class, gender and background loom large in her work, but never as political abstractions. This is history felt on the body, not just processed by the intellect. “I believe that desire, frustration and social and cultural inequality are reflected in the way we examine the contents of our shopping trolley or in the words we use to order a cut of beef,” she has said.

Desire, shame, sickness, loneliness and depression may brand her own and other lives. But, within and behind the most intimate feelings, she traces the marks of a whole culture and an epoch. This unique angle of vision broadened into “The Years” (2008), the book that ranks as her masterpiece. Its autobiographical trajectory widens into a collective psycho-social history of France between the 1940s and the turn of the millennium. Decades, governments and attitudes pass, but adverts, catchphrases and fads lodge in the collective memory as much as big ideas or great events. Translated by Alison Strayer, it won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in 2019 (of which your correspondent was a judge): to date, one of Ms Ernaux’s few honours in the Anglosphere. In France, her many awards include the Prix de la langue française and the Prix Marguerite-Yourcenar, both for the entire body of her work.

Much like those of Abdulrazak Gurnah, last year’s Nobel laureate, and Patrick Modiano, the winner in 2014, Ms Ernaux’s books have steadily accumulated into a formidable oeuvre, rather than appeared as rare starbursts at long intervals. Nobel picks may also send out a veiled topical message, as this one does. At a moment when everyday existence in the supposedly affluent West once again feels stressful and precarious, the Academy has garlanded a humble chronicler of the perils, ordeals and satisfactions of daily routine. In Ms Ernaux’s hands, the supermarket trolley may become a vehicle of history. Her writing elevates those humdrum, embarrassing or cringeworthy experiences that “high” literature spurns in distaste. It draws from them beauty, dignity and (sometimes) tragedy. After all, as “A Girl’s Story” insists: “What counts is not the things that happen, but what we do with them.” ■

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French author Annie Ernaux awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in literature

Annie Ernaux, French author of "A Girl's Story" and "The Years," is the 2022 Nobel Prize winner for literature.

The Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Mats Malm announced the news Thursday before a room full of international journalists, citing Ernaux's "courage and clinical acuity" in her writing as the reason she's been selected for the honor.

In more than 20 books published over five decades, Ernaux has probed deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a society split by gender and class divisions.

After a half-century of defending feminist ideals, Ernaux said “it doesn’t seem to me that women have become equal in freedom, in power,” and she strongly defended women’s rights to abortion and contraception.

“I will fight to my last breath so that women can choose to be a mother or not to be. It’s a fundamental right,” she said at a news conference in Paris. Ernaux's first book, “Cleaned Out,” was about her own illegal abortion before the practice was legalized in France.

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Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

“She writes about things that no one else writes about,” Olsson told The Associated Press after the award announcement in Stockholm. "And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

Ernaux said she wasn't sure what she would do with the Nobel's cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000). “I have a problem with money," she told reporters. "Money is not a goal for me. ... I don’t know how to spend it well.”

Other authors rumored for the prize before Thursday included literary giants from around the world: Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Japan’s Haruki Murakami, Norway’s Jon Fosse and Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid.

Last year’s prize went to the Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose novels explore the impact of migration on individuals and societies.

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 17 women among its 119 laureates. Ernaux is the first French woman to win.

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

In 2018, the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, which names the Nobel literature committee, and sparked an exodus of members. The academy revamped itself but faced more criticism for giving the 2019 literature award to Austria’s Peter Handke, who has been called an apologist for Serbian war crimes.

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Annie Ernaux broke through with intimate, 'plain language'

Ernaux's books present uncompromising portraits of life's most intimate moments, including sexual encounters, illness and the deaths of her parents. Olsson said Ernaux's work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.” He said she had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

Dan Simon, Ernaux's longtime American publisher at Seven Stories Press, said that in the early years, “she insisted that we not categorize her books at all. She did not allow us to refer to them as fiction, and she did not allow us to refer to them as nonfiction.”

Ultimately, he said, Ernaux has created “a genre of fiction in which nothing is made up."

"She’s a great storyteller of her own life," Simon said.

Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Les armoires vides” in 1974 (published in English as “Cleaned Out”). Two more autobiographical novels followed – "Ce qu’ils disent ou rien" (“What They Say Goes”) and "La femme gelée" (“The Frozen Woman”) – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

In the book that made her name, “La place” (“A Man’s Place”), published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she wrote: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

“La honte” (“Shame”), published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while "L’événement" (“Happening”), from 2000, dealt like “Cleaned Out” with an illegal abortion.

Her most critically acclaimed book is “Les années" (“The Years”), published in 2008. Described by Olsson as “the first collective autobiography,” it depicted Ernaux herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Its English translation was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2019.

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Ernaux's "Mémoire de fille" (“A Girl’s Story”), from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s, while “Passion Simple” (“Simple Passion”) and “Se perdre” (“Getting Lost") chart Ernaux's intense affair with a Russian diplomat.

Ernaux has described facing scorn from France's literary establishment because she is a woman from a working-class background.

“My work is political," she said at the news conference. She described growing up in a milieu outside the elite, a world of “people above you” and the seeming impossibility of becoming a famous writer.

“Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country," French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted. "Her voice is that of women’s freedom, and the century’s forgotten ones.”

While Macron praised Ernaux for her Nobel, she has been unsparing with him. A supporter of left-wing causes for social justice, she has poured scorn on Macron's background in banking and said his first term as president failed to advance the cause of French women.

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The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

The prizes will be handed out Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

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Winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in literature goes to French writer Annie Ernaux

Ernaux often addresses issues of gender, language, class and shame in her work. Her writing blurs the line between memoir and fiction such as A Woman's Story , I Remain in Darkness and Cleaned Out .

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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WATCH: Annie Ernaux, French author of deeply personal works, wins Nobel Prize in literature

STOCKHOLM (AP) — French author Annie Ernaux, who has mined her own biography to explore life in France since the 1940s, was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for work that illuminates murky corners of memory, family and society.

The announcement is expected Oct. 6 no earlier than 6:45 a.m. ET. Watch in the player above.

Ernaux’s autobiographical books explore deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a changing web of social and class relationships. Much of her material came out of her experiences being raised in a working-class family in the Normandy region of northwest France.

The Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of her writing.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “an extremely honest writer who is not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

“She writes about things that no one else writes about, for instance her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so forth. I mean, really hard experiences,” he said after the award announcement in Stockholm. “And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

Ernaux is just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates and is the first French literature laureate since Patrick Modiano in 2014. One of France’s most-garlanded authors and a prominent feminist voice, she expressed surprise at the award, asking a Swedish journalist who reached her by phone: “Are you sure?”

“I was working this morning and the phone has been ringing all the time but I haven’t answered,” she told the TT news agency.

WATCH: Gurnah’s latest novel ‘Afterlives’ explores effects of colonial rule in East Africa

Ernaux told Swedish broadcaster SVT that the award was “a great honor” and “a very great responsibility.”

Olsson said Ernaux had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

Her more than 20 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.

Olsson said Ernaux’s work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.”

Ernaux describes her style as “flat writing” — aiming for an very objective view of the events she is describing, unshaped by florid description or overwhelming emotions.

Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Cleaned Out” in 1974. Two more autobiographical novels followed – “What They Say Goes” and “The Frozen Woman” – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

In the book that made her name, “La Place” (A Man’s Place), published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she writes: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

“Shame,” published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while “Happening,” from 2000 depicts an illegal abortion.

Her most critically acclaimed book is “The Years,” published in 2008, which described herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Unlike in previous books, in “The Years,” Ernaux wrote in the third person, calling her character “she” rather than “I”. The book received numerous awards and honors, and Olsson said it has been called “the first collective autobiography.”

“A Girl’s Story,” from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s.

The Nobel literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. Last year’s prize winner, Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah , was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa.

“We try first of all to broaden the scope of the Nobel Prize, but our focus must be on literary quality,” Olsson said.

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

The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

Jordans reported from Berlin and Lawless from London. Naomi Koppel in London, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

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E for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory

G for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents

G for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.

H for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience.

T for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.

I who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world

D for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition

A for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.

M for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.

M , master of the contemporary short story.

Y who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.

T because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.

V L for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat.

M who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.

M G L C author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.

L that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.

P who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.

P who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms.

J for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clich s and their subjugating power

M C who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider

K for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history

S N for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.

X for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama.

G whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history.

S who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.

F who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.

S for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.

H for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.

O who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today. M who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality. W for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment. G who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity. P for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity. J C for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability. M who, through works rich in nuance-now clearsightedly realistic, now evocatively ambigous-has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind. B for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity. S who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence. S who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition. S for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man. W G for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today. G M for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts. C for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power. M who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts. E (pen-name of A ), for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness. B S for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life. A for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry beween the wars. B for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work. M for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions. J for a narrative art, farseeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom.

M for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos. W for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature. B for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature. N for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams. I S for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature. B for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation. K for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind. A A for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America. Y A for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people.

S for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength. A S for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people. P S for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a farreaching influence on our age. (Declined the prize.) S (pen-name of S ), for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture. S for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception. A for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country. -J P (pen-name of L ), for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time. Q for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times. L P for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition. (Accepted first, later caused by the authorities of his country to decline the prize.) C for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times. R J for his lyrical poetry, which in Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistical purity. K L for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland. M H for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea ,and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style. W L S C for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values. M for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life. F L for the artistic vigour and true independence of mind with which he endeavours in his poetry to find answers to the eternal questions confronting mankind. B A W R in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. F for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel. S E for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry. P G G for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight. H for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humaitarian ideals and high qualities of style. M (pen-name of G Y A -Y ), for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world. V J for the rare strength and fertility of his poetic imagination with which is combined an intellectual curiosity of wide scope and a bold, freshly creative style. The prize money was allocated to the Main Fund (1/3) and to the Special Fund (2/3) of this prize section. E S for his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature. B (pen-name of W n�e ), for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces. M D G for the artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novelcycle Les Thibault. G O for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy. P for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art. A B for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing. G for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsythe Saga. A K The poetry of Erik Axel Karlfeldt. L for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters. M principially for his great novel, Buddenbrooks, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature. U principially for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages. B in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brillant skill with which they have been presented. D (pen-name of M n�e ) , for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general. B S for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty. S R (pen-name of ), for his great national epic, The Peasants. B Y for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation. B for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama. F (pen-name of A T ), in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament. P H for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil. F G S in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring.

A G for his varied and rich poetry, which is inspired by lofty ideals.

P for his authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark. G V V H in recognition of his significance as the leading representative of a new era in our literature. R as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings. T because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with comsummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West. J R H primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art. M (M ) P M B M , in appreciation of his manysided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations. J L H as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories. O L L in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings. C E in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength in presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life. K in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author. C not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces. S because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer. M in recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural scenery and native spirit of his people, and, in addition, his significant work as a Proven�al philologist.

E Y E in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama. M B as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit. M T M the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, A history of Rome. P (pen-name of F A ), in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection and a rare combination of the qualitites of both heart and intellect.

[ Back to The Nobel Prize Internet Archive ] [ Literature * Peace * Chemistry * Physics * Economics * Medicine ] We always welcome your feedback and comments . Copyright © 1996-2022 Ona Wu. All rights reserved.

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Annie Ernaux, prix Nobel de littérature 2022

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

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 :

Romain Rolland (Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915),
Roger Martin du Gard (1937),
André Gide (1947),
François Mauriac (1952),
Albert Camus (1957),
Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008),
Patrick Modiano (2014).

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French author, Ernaux wins Nobel Literature Prize

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Ernaux studied literature, having worked as an au pair in London, and was married with two children and teaching in a French secondary school when her first book was published in 1974. Cleaned Out was a fictionalised account of the illegal abortion she had in 1964, which she kept secret from her family. Her work is largely autobiographical. She revisited that trauma 25 years later for the book Happening, in which she “sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days”. It was turned into a film that won the top prize at last year’s Venice Film Festival. [ad] Speaking further, Prof Heldin said: “Annie Ernaux manifestly believes in the liberating force of writing. Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean.” She got divorced in the early 1980s, and in 2000 she retired from teaching to devote herself to writing. Another of Ernaux’s books, The Years, won the Prix Renaudot in France in 2008 and the Premio Strega in Italy in 2016, while a year later she won the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her life’s work. In 2019, The Years went on to be shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, whose judges called it a “genre-bending masterpiece”. [ad] Booker said at the time that “autobiography is given a new form, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective”. The New Yorker wrote in 2020 that over her 20 books, “she has been devoted to a single task: the excavation of her own life”. Awarded since 1901, The Nobel Prizes recognise achievement in literature, science, peace and latterly economics. Last year’s literary prize was won by Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah. Other winners have included novelists such as Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison, plus poets such as Louise Gluck, Pablo Neruda, Joseph Brodsky and Rabindranath Tagore, and playwrights including Harold Pinter and Eugene O’Neill. [ad]

Annie Ernaux
French writer
Nobel Literature Prize

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“Every single poem has its own story. Some take three minutes. Some take years,” Louise Glück told her Harvard audience.

Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

A singular poet

Harvard Correspondent

Nobel laureate Louise Glück, delivering Doft Lecture, recalls Judaism of her youth, shares details from her writing life

Creative process and Jewish tradition were central to a lively conversation last Tuesday, as Nobel Prize-winning poet Louise Glück delivered the Center for Jewish Studies ’ annual Doft Lecture. The poet was welcomed to Harvard by David Stern , director of the center and a professor of comparative literature, and John Coogan University Professor of Humanities Stephen Greenblatt .

Following Stern’s introduction, Greenblatt discussed the push and pull of Judaism in his own life. Seeing something of this “enigmatic relationship” in Glück’s work, he spoke of the weight of Judaism’s cultural and literary inheritance. Finally, admitting that he might be reaching too far to try to connect Glück’s work with religion, he praised the Cambridge-based poet for the achievement and intensity of her art. “It is she who is doing us a singular mitzvah,” Greenblatt said.

Glück, whose paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jews, responded that some of her work does engage with the inheritance noted by Greenblatt. The father of the twin infant protagonists of her new work of short fiction, “Marigold and Rose,” for example, is only half Jewish, but “has been afflicted with the full complement of Jewish guilt.”

Glück proceeded to read a selection of her work, from some of her earliest poems through “Marigold and Rose.” “Legend,” from the 1985 collection “The Triumph of Achilles,” seems to reference her family’s experience directly:

My father’s father came to New York from Dhlua: one misfortune followed another. In Hungary, a scholar, a man of property. Then failure: an immigrant rolling cigars in a cold basement. … in such a world, to scorn privilege, to love reason and justice, always to speak the truth — which has been the salvation of our people since to speak the truth gives the illusion of freedom.

Kicking off the question-and-answer session, Greenblatt asked the poet about her experience of Judaism as a child.

“Did you go to shul? Did you go to Hebrew school?”

“Briefly, all of it,” Glück said, describing herself as “a child who had many lessons.” However, unlike her piano, flute, and ballet lessons, the religious teaching didn’t stick. A student who was “not good at languages” was not going to excel at Hebrew school.

“This was deeply troubling to me,” she continued, “so I tried being the worst at it.”

Although Glück failed in her effort to become the terror of the classroom (only succeeding in “being unpleasant”), her parents eventually gave in and allowed her to quit. Away from school, she attended High Holy Day services and fasted on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, “sometimes.”

“It wasn’t so much that I was repelled by Judaism but that I was repelled by family,” Glück said. “I did not want to be a member of the family in which I was born, and I felt religion to be an emblem of that family.”

Questions from the audience focused on composition. But if anyone hoped to learn of an organized system that could be duplicated, they were out of luck.

“Every single poem has its own story,” Glück said. “Some take three minutes. Some take years.”

Nor does she follow a strict writing regimen. “I don’t sit at my desk and engage in my practice,” she said. That is not to say she never tried, only that she found the effort unproductive. “The anxiety was worse than the anxiety of doing nothing,” she said.

On the topic of revision, she acknowledged occasional frustration. “Sometimes I realize a poem is nowhere near finished, but I’ve played all my cards,” she said. Among other tactics, she might change the syntax: “It will jar the poem. Maybe.” Beyond that, listening to readers or adding another voice sometimes helps, she said.

She also relies on time and experience. “When I was young, I always had a sense of when something was done. I didn’t always have a sense of when something was good.”

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Heritage Offers Nobel Prize Certified by NGC

Posted on 7/16/2024

This Nobel Prize, the first authenticated and graded by NGC, was awarded to a German cancer researcher in 2008.

Numismatic Guaranty Company® (NGC®) is proud to have certified a Nobel Prize that was awarded to Harald zur Hausen, a German cancer researcher. The Nobel Prize is among more than 900 NGC-certified coins and medals being offered in Heritage Auctions' ANA World & Ancient Coins Platinum Session and Signature® Auction , which will be held August 15-17, 2024.

The obverse of the medal shows a bust of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), along with the years of his birth and death in Roman numerals. The name of the sculptor (E. Lindberg) and the year it was sculpted (1902) are included near the rim.

The reverse, also designed by Erik Lindberg, features a female figure representing medicine above H. ZUR HUASEN MMVIII, the name of the Nobel laureate and the year the prize was awarded. Arching over the scene is the Latin phrase "Inventas vitam iuvat excoluisse per artes," which pays tribute to those who improve life through discoveries. Zur Hausen passed away in 2023.

Nobel was the Swedish inventor of dynamite who used his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize. The initial Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901 in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature and Peace. A prize for Economics was added in 1968, funded by Sveriges Riksbank, the Central Bank of Sweden.

It is rare for a Nobel Prize to be offered at auction. In 2013, the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Medal awarded to Francis Crick for his groundbreaking DNA research realized $2.27 million. In 2015, the 1966 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Medal awarded to virus researcher Francis Peyton Rous realized $461,000. In 2022, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Medal awarded to Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa for their humanitarian efforts realized $103.5 million. Each of these medals sold through Heritage Auctions.

a Gold Medallion struck under Roman Emperor Diocletian (AD 284-305) graded NGC Ancients Ch AU★, 5/5 Strike and 5/5 Surface with Fine Style , which realized $2.3 million in a Classical Numismatic Group auction in 2023
astronaut Neil Armstrong's Gold Robbins Medal graded NGC MS 67 and pedigreed to the Apollo 11 moon mission, which realized $2.055 million in a Heritage Auctions sale in 2019
a Congressional Gold Medal that was awarded to William Henry Harrison graded NGC MS 60 PL , which realized $600,000 at a Sedwick auction in 2023
several Olympic medals, including the first Olympic Gold Medal for Basketball , which was awarded to the captain of the US team at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics

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James McBride poses with chin in hand. He's wearing a blue beret, blue turtleneck and gray sweater with a hoop earring in his left ear.

James McBride Awarded the 2024 Prize for American Fiction

July 11, 2024

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced this week that the Library is conferring the 2024 Prize for American Fiction on acclaimed author James McBride. He will accept the prize at the National Book Festival on Aug. 24.

One of the Library’s most prestigious awards, the annual Prize for American Fiction honors a literary writer whose body of work is distinguished not only for its mastery of the art, but also for its originality of thought and imagination.

“I’m honored to bestow the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction on a writer as imaginative and knowing as James McBride,” Hayden said. “McBride knows the American soul deeply, reflecting our struggles and triumphs in his fiction, which so many readers have intimately connected with. I, also, am one of his enthusiastic readers.”

The award seeks to commend strong, unique, enduring voices that — throughout consistently accomplished careers — have told us something essential about the American experience.

“I wish my mom were still alive to know about this,” McBride said. “I’m delighted and honored. Does it mean I can use the Library? If so, I’m double thrilled.”

McBride is the author of the bestselling novel “Deacon King Kong”; “The Good Lord Bird,” winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction; “The Color of Water”; “Song Yet Sung”; the story collection “Five-Carat Soul”; and the James Brown biography “Kill ’Em and Leave.”

His debut novel, “Miracle at St. Anna,” was turned into a 2008 film. In 2016, McBride was awarded the National Humanities Medal.

He is also a musician, a composer and a current distinguished writer-in-residence at New York University.

McBride’s most recent bestselling novel, “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,” received the 2023 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and was named Barnes and Noble’s 2023 Book of the Year.

The National Book Festival will take place from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The theme is “Books Build Us Up.”

On Aug. 1, McBride will participate in a virtual interview with PBS Books as part of a series previewing 2024 festival authors.

McBride has appeared at multiple National Book Festivals in past years, most recently in 2020, when he spoke about his novel “Deacon King Kong.”

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Announcing The Shortlist for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

The $25,000 prize celebrates a book-length work of imaginative fiction

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, a $25,000 prize honoring a book-length work of imaginative fiction, today announces the shortlist for the 2024 prize.

The prize, created to continue Le Guin’s legacy, is given to a writer whose work reflects the concepts and ideas that were central to Ursula’s own work: hope, equity, and freedom; non-violence and alternatives to conflict; and a holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world. It is also intended to offer its recipients a bit of freedom; as Theo Downes-Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor, said in 2022, “We tried to design a prize that, even if it wasn’t life-changing in the context of every individual’s circumstances, is a significant enough amount to provide a positive disruption.”

In 2022, the inaugural prize went to Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for The House of Rust , and in 2023, Rebecca Campbell received the prize for Arboreality .

The prize shortlist is selected by the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation, and the recipient is chosen by a panel of authors that this year includes Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Megan Giddings, Ken Liu, and Carmen Maria Machado.The recipient of the 2024 prize will be announced on Monday, October 21st, Ursula K. Le Guin’s birthday.

Here is the shortlist for the 2024 prize!

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

A young man rejects his chosen-one upbringing and discovers a much stranger life in a city full of doors and powers. Through layered storytelling that is both fantastical and familiar, Chandrasekera re-mythologizes the boundless ways that people shape and reshape history and the world.

The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher

At the grave of her beloved aunt, a queer, blue-skinned, Palestinian American woman ponders the next stage of her life and how it is informed by her family’s past. Cypher deftly explores the complexities of the stories we tell about ourselves, and the histories hidden in tales of magic and transformation.

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken

In De Marcken’s compassionate novella, a nameless, undead protagonist finds new ways to navigate the landscapes shared by the living and the dead, the human and the inhuman. Her journey poignantly demonstrates new ways to grieve in and for a world we often take for granted.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Over the course of a single day, six astronauts orbit the earth, witnessing repeated sunrises, tending to their tasks and their bodies, and watching as a typhoon gathers far below. Meditative and precise, Orbital fosters an essential and global shift in perspective.

Sift by Alissa Hattman

Hattman’s elegiac novella follows two women as they cross a shifting, surreal, post-climate disaster landscape, seeking a place where they can grow food. Tender and rich with memories of the world as we know it, Sift is a meditation on isolation, change, and loss.

Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson

The loyal mechanic to an emperor tells a story of revolution, community, and love in Johnson’s novel, which begins as a supernatural murder mystery before expanding to fearlessly consider what it might take for one world in the multiverse to achieve massive structural change.

The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Johnson’s novel takes the form of the story a young woman tells to an AI god she intends to destroy. Encompassing several worlds, many gods, and peoples displaced and destroyed by war and colonialism, her tale is woven through with complex ideas about selfhood, history, and freedom.

The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed

In a world long divided by conflict, a famed pacifist is coerced into a mission of war alongside a zealot who cares only for victory. Mohamed melds inventive worldbuilding with a nuanced consideration of power, violence, nationalism, and what it takes to achieve peace.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

A space opera and a profound lesson in changing one’s mind, Some Desperate Glory follows a girl raised in a violent space cult who learns how to unravel the lies of her upbringing. Tesh shows that paradigm shifts are possible, however wrenchingly difficult they may be.

Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

Returning after a long absence, a story-collecting cleric finds that their abbey’s leader has died, and their distant family waits at the gates, demanding the body. Tracing the multitude of connections that exist in a single life, Vo illustrates the transformative power that grief has for an individual and for a community.

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DON’T MISS OUT

International Booker Prize announces 2024 jury for $87K literary award for best fiction translated to English

The jury is chaired by writer english writer and editor max porter.

A white man wearing a blue polo. A Black man wearing a black shirt. A South Asian woman with glasses. An East Asian man wearing a quarter-zip. A white woman with blond hair.

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The International Booker Prize has announced the jury for the 2024 prize.

English writer and editor Max Porter will chair the five-person jury. Porter will be joined by Nigerian-British writer, director and photographer Caleb Femi, Sana Goyal, editor and publishing director of Wasafiri literary magazine , Korean novelist and translator Anton Hur and English musician Beth Orton.

The annual award recognizes the best works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland. The £50,000 ($87,397.25 Cdn) grand prize is divided equally between writer and translator.

Porter is the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers , which won the the Sunday Times/Peters, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award and the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Lanny, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and Shy, which he adapted as a screenplay that will be filmed by Netflix in 2024. He is a Royal Society of Literature fellow and was formerly the editorial director of Granta Books.

Femi is the writer of poetry collection Poor , which won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2021. He is also the director of TV episodes for HBO, the BBC and Netflix as well as films and runways for many high-fashion brands. He was the Young People's Laureate for London and was featured in the Dazed 100 list of people making waves in youth culture. His next book The Wickedest is forthcoming in September 2024.

Goyal is the current editor and publishing director of the literary magazine Wasafiri. Her book reviews are published in The Guardian, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Poetry Review and Vogue India among other outlets. She judged the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize.

The top 20 Canadian books of 2024, so far

Born in Stockholm and currently living in Seoul, Hur is the third translator in history to be longlisted twice for the International Booker Prize in the same year. In 2022, his translation of Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung and that of Sang Young Park's Love in the Big City made the longlist. He is also the writer of novels Toward Eternity and No One Told Me Not To. He has won both a PEN Translates grant and a PEN/Heim grant.

Orton is a singer-songwriter of seven solo albums, for which she has won a BRIT Award and been nominated for multiple Mercury Prizes. Her self-produced album Weather Alive was critically acclaimed and was on numerous best of the year lists, including that of The New York Times. She has toured around the world, headlining venues such as Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Glastonbury Festival and Carnegie Hall.

'" The judging panel of the International Booker Prize 2025 is made up of a novelist, a poet, a translator, a critic and a songwriter, all of whom cross boundaries into other art forms," said Fiammetta Rocco, administrator of the International Booker Prize.

"In their various ways, they are steeped in the world of words. That deep expertise, along with their critical judgment as readers and writers, will be vitally important in the private reading and communal judging discussions that will be held over the coming months."

The CBC Books summer reading list: 45 Canadian books to read this season

The panel will look for the best work of fiction translated to English published in the U.K. and Ireland between May 1, 2024 and Apr. 30, 2025. Authors of any nationality are eligible.

A longlist of 12 or 13 books will be announced in February 2025, with the shortlist of six books to follow in April. The winner will be revealed in May 2025.

Esteemed broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel, who recently retired from hosting the CBC Radio show Writers & Company , chaired the International Booker Prize jury last year. The 2024 winner was German author Jenny Erpenbeck for Kairos, the story of a tangled love affair during the final years of East Germany's existence.