The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature goes to French author Annie Ernaux. This is announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Stockholm – Annie Ernaux wins the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022. This was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Thursday. The 82-year-old is being honored for “the courage and clinical perspicacity” with which she “exposes the roots, alienations and collective limitations of personal memory,” said the Nobel Committee in Stockholm. Her literary work is essentially autobiographical.
It has not yet been possible to reach her by telephone, said the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mats Malm, when the award was announced. The Nobel Prize in Literature is considered the most prestigious literary award in the world. There were 233 candidates on the so-called long list for the award this year – which names are among them is kept top secret every year.
Annie Ernaux wins Nobel Prize for Literature 2022
Ernaux spent her childhood in Yvetot, a small French commune in Normandy. According to her own statements, she grew up in modest circumstances, her parents were workers and later ran a small shop with a café. Ernaux attended a lycée, a secondary school, and studied in Rouen and Bordeaux before teaching at several schools.
In 2022, the 82-year-old made her debut as a director. She presented the autobiographical documentary The Super 8 Years at the Cannes Film Festival. Ernaux is considered one of the most influential voices in contemporary French literature. One of her best-known works is Les Années, published in 2008 in Germany in 2017 under the title Die Jahre. The book has won several awards. In 2008 she received the Prix de la langue française for her complete works.
Nobel Prize in Literature 2022: Frenchwoman Anni Ernaux wins prestigious award
The Nobel Prize for Literature, like the other traditional Nobel Prizes, goes back to the will of the prize donor and dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). On the anniversary of his death, December 10th, the prizes will be awarded in Stockholm and Oslo. This year, the awards are again endowed with ten million Swedish crowns per category. Converted, this corresponds to almost 920,000 euros.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Literature went to the previously relatively unknown Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah. He was honored “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the ramifications of colonialism and the plight of the fugitive across the divide between cultures and continents.” The year before, the American poet Louise Glück had received the Nobel Prize – she was not considered one of the many favorites beforehand.
This year’s Nobel Prize winners in the categories medicine, physics and chemistry were announced in the first half of the week. German prizewinners were not among them, but the Swede Svante Pääbo, who works in Leipzig, was. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his findings on human evolution. (fmü with material from AFP and dpa)
