Arnaud, the only French woman to ever win the Nobel Prize for Literature

This year, an 83-year-old Frenchwoman won the Nobel Prize for Literature. This is Annie Erno, who became the first woman from that country to be recognized.

In the past decade, only France has been awarded the Nobel Prize in this category with Patrick Modiano (2014) and Frenchman Sauli Prudhomme received the first prize in history in 1901.

As the Academy put it, “the courage and clinical acumen with which he discovered the roots, alienation, and collective limitations of personal memory” were appreciated.

Specifically, most of his works evoke his memories and experiences of both childhood and youth times and adult life. His most recent work, for example, Getting Lost (2022), tells of his relationship with a Russian diplomat who has been married for more than a year.

On the other hand, there are his works A Man’s Place (1992), which is inspired by his father’s story: the social rise and responsibility of being the head of the family; and A Woman’s Story (1987), which focuses on her mother’s story, is an account of a powerful woman who pushes the boundaries of imagination and mixes it with history and sociology.

“His work is relentless and written in simple, clean language. And when you reveal with great courage and clinical intelligence the agony of the classroom experience, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy, or the inability to see who you are, you have achieved something impressive and lasting,” stressed Anders Olsson, Chairman of the Committee Nobel Prize for the Swedish Academy.

On the other hand, in “Shame” from 1996, he deals with the cohabitation of both parents, their tantrums and their childhood memories, and the intimate description Olson highlights, for example, in sentences such as “My father tried to kill my mother on a Sunday in June, in early afternoon.”

His first novel was Les Armoires Vides in 1974, but he gained international acclaim after Les Années was published in 2008, and translated into The Years in 2017. Other works of his occur (2000); Pure Passion 1991; Girl’s History (2016); years (2008); and Things Seen, published 2010.

“Annie Erno clearly believes in the power of liberating writing,” adds the Nobel committee chair.

With appreciation, French joins the list of accomplished writers recognized by the Academy; In 2020, the year of the epidemic, the surprise came by the American Louise Gluck, and last year by the Tanzanian Abdul Razak Gurneh.

In addition to the Nobel, Erno won the Renault Prize (1984); Maillé Latour Prize (1984); French Language Award (2008); François Mauriac Prize (2008); Brix Marguerite Duras (2008); and Prix de l’Académie de Berlin (2019).

Who is Annie Erno?

The writer was born in 1940 in Yvétotte, Normandy (France) in a family of shopkeepers, her parents had a grocery store and a cafeteria in the city, so her economic capacity was not the highest.

According to the official biography of the Nobel laureate, his family managed to transition from a proletarian life to a bourgeois one, which was expressed in many of his works.

Drawing on her life experiences, struggles, and anecdotes, Annie’s writings focused on highlighting inequalities of gender, language, and class, which also influenced her path to literature and becoming an author.

A Man’s Place (1992), his fourth published book, would have given his career its first boost. The work dealt with his father’s history and the social effects that shaped him.

“His writing always faints with a sense of betrayal to the social class from which he comes. He has said that writing is a political act, and that it opens our eyes to social inequality. For this, he uses language as a “knife,” as she calls it, to tear the veil of imagination,” Olson concluded.