She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, and her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her parents' place of origin.
As a child, Annie Ernaux lived in Yvetot in Normandy. Very early in her career, she turned away from fiction to concentrate on autobiography. Her work combines historic and individual experiences.She charts her parents' social progression (La place, La honte), her adolescence (Ce qu’ils disent ou rien), her marriage (La femme gelée), her abortion (L’événement), Alzheimer's disease (Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit), the death of her mother (Une femme) and breast cancer (L’usage de la photo). Ernaux also wrote L'écriture comme un couteau with Frédéric-Yves Jeannet.
Her latest novel "Les années" (Gallimard, 2008) is considered her 'magnum opus' and was very well received by the French critics. In this latter book Ernaux places herself into third person perspective (Elle) for the first time and gives a vivid look at French society after the Second World War - up till now - through the images kept, and words spoken by this same woman. A poignant social history once again of a woman and the society she lived in, a woman who has looked death in the eye and realises and describes what will disappear, and how relative that is, if she would disappear.
Bibliography
Les Armoires vides, Paris, Gallimard, 1974
Ce qu’ils disent ou rien, Paris, Gallimard, 1977
La Femme gelée, Paris, Gallimard, 1981
La Place, Paris, Gallimard, 1984
Une Femme, Paris, Gallimard, 1989
Passion simple, Paris, Gallimard, 1991
Journal du dehors, Paris, Gallimard, 1993
La Honte, Paris, Gallimard, 1997
Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit, Paris, Gallimard, 1997
La Vie extérieure, Paris, Gallimard, 2000
L’Événement, Paris, Gallimard, 2000
Se perdre, Paris, Gallimard, 2001
L’Occupation, Paris, Gallimard, 2002
L’Usage de la photo, with Marc Marie, Paris, Gallimard, 2005
Les Années, Paris, Gallimard, 2008
External links
Annie Ernaux: La Place: Introduction by Tony McNeill, University of Sunderland (UK). Last Update 28-Feb-96. Last accessed Feb. 25, 2006.
