Annie Ernaux is a French writer of memoirs and life prose. She is best known for her works The Years (2008) and Cleared Out (1974). In 2022, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Annie Ernaux, née Duchesne, was born in 1940 in Lillebonne, in Normandy. Soon after, her parents moved to Yvetot. They ran a café and a food shop in a work area.
She attended a private Catholic school in Yvetot. There, she met girls from wealthier backgrounds. She later wrote about the shame she felt for her parents and social class.
In 1958, aged 18, she left home to work at a summer camp. She cared for children at a colonie de vacances. That summer, she had her first sexual experiences with her peers. She recounted this experience in her 2016 memoir, A Girl's Story.
In 1960, she went to London as an au pair. She then began studying for a teaching qualification in Rouen. She left that course to take a literature degree in Rouen. While in London, she wrote the opening pages of her first novel, which was never published.
She later got married and had two sons. She obtained teaching posts via the Capès and the agrégation. She taught French in Annecy, Haute-Savoie. In 1967, she returned to Normandy to be with her father during his final days.
Her debut novel was Cleaned Out (1974). It drew on her experience of having an illegal abortion in 1964. It also traced her transition across social classes through education. Do What They Say or Else (1977) came next. A Frozen Woman (1981) also drew on her own life.
In 1977, her family moved to Cergy-Pontoise, near Paris. She later left her teaching post to work for the CNED. She won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place (1983). After a divorce in the early 1980s, she kept her home in Cergy.
In 2000, Annie Ernaux left her teaching post to write full-time. The Years (2008) links her life to a broader shared history. It won both the Marguerite Duras and the François Mauriac prizes. The English translation was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
Her work has also won the Prix de la Langue Française and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize. In 2011, Gallimard published Écrire la vie in its Quarto series. In 2014, she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Cergy-Pontoise.
In an interview, she said: 'If readers take the time to write to me, I feel that I owe them something in return.' In October 2022, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 2024, her Nobel lecture was published as I Will Write to Avenge My People (2024).
