The narrator, one of the greats of French literature, shamelessly reveals the feminine condition in her work
Annie Ernaux is the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, which the Swedish Academy failed to do this Thursday. She will take over from the Brit of Tanzanian descent Abdulrazak Gurnah, 2021 winner.
Refusing to satisfy the most peaceful expectations of a well-to-do reader, he questions the society of his time with an unusual rudeness hard to find among his contemporaries.
The rigorous literary work of Ernaux (Lillebonne, 1940) is, according to the jury that awarded him the Formentor de las Letras prize in 2019, a “ruthless exercise in truth that penetrates into the most intimate recesses of consciousness”.
“I can accept that my writing is rude, because I’ve never written in search of a beautiful sentence,” he admitted at the time. «I have always fled from decorative writing. I’m looking for honest and true sentences, not beautiful ones,” he emphasized. “Writing is political and the most important political act I can do is write,” he insisted.
Innovatively and courageously, she tackled experiences as painful as abortion (“The Event”), her father’s death (“The Place”), her mother’s illness (“I have not get out of my night”). , cancer (‘The use of the photo’), the breakdown of marriage (‘La mujer iceda’) or the restoration of the sexual drive (‘Pure passion’).
These are some of the works of a narrator that shows ‘the reverse of seemingly obvious events’, who renounced fiction and her class to find her place in the world and in literature through the depths of her self. to enter. “Writing is political, and for me a supreme political act.”
That rejection of fiction made her the writer she is. “It was progressive. I would have liked to fable about the world of my parents and childhood, but it was impossible. I thought it was not legitimate to write about me, and as a result of that finding I rejected fiction. I could don’t go from there. When I started writing I had the memory of some of the things I had experienced, but not the social memory that later became so present in my work,” he explained.
French writer Michel Houellebecq, who along with Britain’s Salman Rushdie and Russia’s Liudmila Ulítskaya was the bookmakers’ favorite to win the prize, remained in the gutter.
The Norwegians Jon Fosse, Karl Ove Knausgård and Dag Solstad, the Russian Vladimir Sorokin, the American Cormac McCarthy and the Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi also appeared in the groups.
The death of Javier Marías on September 11 left Spanish letters without the candidate who had made the most noise in recent years to succeed Marios Vargas Llosa, along with others such as Eduardo Mendoza, Enrique Vila-Matas or Argentina’s César Aira.
In the 122 year history of the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy has so far awarded 118 writers, 16 of them women and more than 80% from Europe or North America. In the list of winners, there is a clear command of the English language (31 winners), for French and German (14) and Spanish (11).
The average age of the winners is 65 years, with Briton Ruyard Kipling the youngest winner (41 years) and Doris Lessing the oldest (88 years).
Recent winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature include Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021, Tanzania-United Kingdom), Louise Glück (2020, United States), Kazuo Ishiguro (2017, United Kingdom), Bob Dylan (2016, United States), Svetlana Aleksiévich ( 2015, Belarus), Patrick Modiano (2014, France), Alice Munro (2013, Canada), Mo Yan (2012, China), Tomas Transtrmer (2011, Sweden) or Mario Vargas Llosa (2010, Peru).
The Nobel Prize in Literature is the fourth to be awarded in 2022. On Monday, Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his genomic studies on Neanderthals and Denisovans, which have changed the understanding of human evolution. This Tuesday they received the Physics Anton Zeilinger, Alain Aspect and John Clauser for their groundbreaking work in quantum information. Yesterday it was announced for Chemistry, which went to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless, the promoters of the linkage between molecules. Tomorrow, Friday, the one for Peace will be announced and next Monday, October 10, that for Economy.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
