Nobel Prize Winner Annie Ernaux Speaks on How Class Shapes Her Writing
- David Broder
This week, French writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In an interview, she explains how her class background and the reality of class divides shape her writing.
French author Annie Ernaux gives a press conference as she wins the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 6, 2022 in Paris, France. (Marc Piasecki / Getty Images)
This week the French writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Hailing from a working-class family in Normandy, Ernaux is known for her works of “autosociobiography” such as The Years, in which the struggles of her own background are connected to a wider canvas of postwar French life.
In this interview with Manuel Cervera-Marzal, Ernaux spoke about the barriers working-class writers face, the sociological influences on her thought, and how writing about individual experience can express the violence of class domination.
Manuel Cervera-Marzal
Your literary studies and your success in the teaching exams offered you an escape from the circumstances you grew up in. But these circumstances remain a decisive factor in your writing. Do you think that your family’s working-class background drove you to write differently than writers from more privileged families?
Annie Ernaux
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.