Daughter of the last century (she was born in Normandy in 1940), Annie Ernaux has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for having composed, with her books, taken individually and collectively, the literary work of our time. The story of a woman – her – who becomes all women – us.
What is more beautiful, more exciting, than hearing a secret told? Annie Ernaux knew how to find the exact, precise, deep language, to give us the impression of being associated with the secrets of humanity, but especially with those of women of the XXe century.
Younger, older, near or far, but all struggling with an era, passing time, love, ambition, the betrayal of one’s social class, sex, revolt, self-denial in the name of of a passion. Freedom. The secrets and the shame that goes with them, and the impudent (literary) decision to tell them. Annie Ernaux used the word “I” as one uses a voice, as one makes a voice one’s own. She seized the power of the word and relied on her own life to tell the story of life.
The chapters of our history
It started in 1974 with Empty Cabinets and hasn’t stopped since. Annie Ernaux arrived in Italy almost immediately. Her novels were translated here in the 1980s and 1990s, but the craze for this writer is due to a small publishing house,