Sitemap

Nobel Prize In Literature Awarded To French Author Annie Ernaux

Century Of The Belgrade Philharmonic

Enthusiasm, Dedication And Virtuosity

In the year that sees the Belgrade...

Predrag J. Marković, Historian

In History, The Best Told Story Wins

He was aged just 15 when he...

Jelena Petrović Njegoš (It. Elena Del Montenegro, Or Elena Di Savoia) 1873-1952

150th Anniversary Of The Birth Of The Last Italian Queen

Jelena Petrović Njegoš, aka Elena of Montenegro...

Alpine Ski Museum

Slovenia: At The Heart Of The History Of Skiing

This cutting-edge museum details the history of...

World Environment Day 25 June: Solutions To Plastic Pollution

More than 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced every year worldwide, half of which is designed to be used only...

Serbia To Celebrate The EU Green Week

Serbia is celebrating the EU Green Week again this year, with a set of events that brings together hundreds...

Elon Musk Reclaims Title Of World’s Richest Person

Elon Musk is once again the world’s richest person after leapfrogging French billionaire Bernard Arnault, after a slump in the...

Argentina’s Candidate Wins Vote To Lead UN Weather Agency

 Argentina's Celeste Saulo was appointed to head the U.N. weather agency on Thursday, a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spokesperson...

AFI Europe Serbia Unveils New Project: AFI City Zmaj

One of Belgrade’s and the region’s most esteemed real estate investors, AFI Europe Serbia, has once again confirmed through...

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the French author Annie Ernaux for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.

The French writer Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 and grew up in the small town of Yvetot in Normandy, where her parents had a combined grocery store and café. Her setting was poor but ambitious, with parents who had pulled themselves up from proletarian survival to a bourgeois life, where the memories of beaten earth floors never disappeared but where politics was seldom broached. In her writing, Ernaux consistently and from different angles, examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class. Her path to authorship was long and arduous.

A masterpiece from her production is the clinically restrained narrative about a 23-year-old narrator’s illegal abortion, ‘L’événement’ (2000; ‘Happening’, 2001). It is a first-person narrative, and the distance to the historical self is not stressed as in many other works.

The is made an object anyway through the moral restrictions of a repressive society and the patronising attitude of people she is confronted with. It is a ruthlessly honest text, where in parentheses she adds reflexions in a vitally lucid voice, addressing herself and the reader in one and the same flow. In the spaces in between, we are in the time of writing, 25 years after the “event” took place, making even the reader intensely part of what once happened.

Annie Ernaux manifestly believes in the liberating force of writing. Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean. And when she with great courage and clinical acuity 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.

Related Articles

Sweden Likely To Becoming First Smoke-free Country

Sweden has the lowest smoking rate in the European Union, and is likely to be declared a "smoke-free" country soon, a term used for...

Solar Power Due To Overtake Oil Production Investment For First Time -IEA

Investment in clean energy will extend its lead over spending on fossil fuels in 2023, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday, with solar...

Southern Europe Braces For Climate Change-Fuelled Summer Of Drought

Southern Europe is bracing for a summer of ferocious drought, with some regions already suffering water shortages and farmers expecting their worst yields in...

France Awards The Order of Arts and Letters To Bora Babić

Bora Babić, director of the publishing house Akademska knjiga from Novi Sad, was awarded The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres ('Order of Arts...

Sweden Takes Over The EU Presidency From 1 January

From 1 January to 30 June 2023, Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This is the third time...

H.E. Pierre Cochard, Ambassador Of France

Solid Bilateral Relations

Our relationship is not only exceptional capital bequeathed by history, but also a relationship that’s more alive than ever before. The year 2023 will...

H.E. Annika Ben David, Ambassador Of Sweden

Sweden And The EU Presidency

What we have witnessed is historic unity in the EU… The real heroes are, of course, the Ukrainian women and men fighting for their...

Swedish Hasselback Potatoes

Easy recipe for Swedish Hasselback Potatoes. These potatoes are very popular in the Nordic kitchen and is a great side dish for a lot...