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Annie Ernaux’s Writing Has Given Dignity to the Lives of the Working Class

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Last week, Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her courage in interrogating France’s collective memory. Her work has been concerned with the lives of working-class women, which her books have treated with an uncommon dignity and respect.

Annie Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last Thursday, was not on the other end of the telephone when the committee rang to deliver the news. Last year, she received a prank text telling her she had won the illustrious award, which might be one reason why her first response when the committee did get through to her was incredulous: “Are you sure?” Unlike Philip Roth who sat on tenterhooks waiting for a call that never came, Ernaux, at eighty-two, was never too fussed about prizes. Certainly she didn’t wait in expectation of them. When she didn’t win the Man Booker…

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