Annie Ernaux became the first French woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, in recognition of the “courage and clinical acuity” with which she has mined her personal experiences as a woman of working-class background to explore life in France since World War II.
Ernaux “consistently and from different angles examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class”, said the Swedish Academy, explaining its choice of the 82-year-old author – the 16th Nobel laureate to write in French.
