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Annie Ernaux

Biography

Annie Ernaux

The author of some 20 works of fiction and memoir, Annie Ernaux is considered by many to be France’s most important literary voice. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A MAN'S PLACE and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for THE YEARS, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Her other works include EXTERIORS, A GIRL'S STORY, A WOMAN'S STORY, THE POSSESSION, SIMPLE PASSION, HAPPENING, I REMAIN IN DARKNESS, SHAME, A FROZEN WOMAN and A MAN'S PLACE.

Annie Ernaux

Books by Annie Ernaux

Getting Lost
written by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer - Diary, Nonfiction

GETTING LOST is the diary Annie Ernaux kept during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a Russian diplomat. Her novel, SIMPLE PASSION, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate, unfiltered. In these diaries it is 1989, and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris and nearing 50. Her lover escapes the city to see her there, and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying that “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call; she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death.