Hello
Gentle Reader
It’s
been quite a year for Annie Ernaux. The French intimate documenter,
sociological curatorial stenographer, and candid memoirist, has finally gained
her foothold on a global literary level. Long praised and applauded as a master
of the French language and narrative, Annie Ernaux, has been a staple of the
French literary canon. Her literary output has been established on works that
have been defined as memoirs and autofiction—a unique narrative that blends
autobiographical components, with fictionalized narrative elements, in essence,
autofiction is an exaggerated or bashful lie with personalized recounts. Anne
Ernaux though resents the term autofiction as an appropriate critical claim to
her work. Autofiction as a whole is a rather ‘vogue,’ term by literary standards,
and has many practitioners in France such as Marguerite Duras, Emmanuel Carrère,
and Édouard Louis; as well as abroad including: Karl Ove Knausgaard. Ernaux
sees herself as slightly detached from this movement. She recounts the personal
only as an anchoring point of perspective reviewing the objective global events
that take place externally, or social movements which are changing the times. The
personal is merely a tour guide through the events, as they take place,
complete with their own struggles, issues and dramatic intrigues.
Earlier
this spring, Annie Ernaux was longlisted and then shortlisted for this year’s
Man Booker International Prize, with her postmodern plural memoir: “The Years,”
and has been marked a critic favourite to win the award. The publication and
translation of “The Years,” has become a turning point in the author’s career
and trajectory. The postmodern chorus narrative, pluralized in ‘we,’ and only
salted with sporadic references of ‘she.’ “The Years,” have been called and
defined as Annie Ernaux’s magnum opus,
her testament to a generation in flux and aging from the end of the Second
World War to the rapidly changing twenty-first century. Now widely translated,
Annie Ernaux has finally found herself peaking from behind the curtains to a
wider world ready to appreciate her work.
Recently,
Annie Ernaux has snagged The Formentor Prize, also known as Premio Formentor de
las Letras, Formentor Literature Priz, or the Prix Formentor. It’s an
international literary award, which was first conceived in nineteen-sixty one
and had a short duration lasting until 1967. It was re-established in
two-thousand and eleven and has awarded such writers as:
2011 - Carlos Fuentes
2012 - Juan Goytisolo
2013 - Javier Marías
2014 - Enrique Vila-Matas
2015 - Ricardo Piglia
2016 - Roberto Calasso
2017 - Alberto Manguel
2018 - Mircea Cărtărescu
The
award seeks to bestow great writes who write with remarkable taste and
ingenuity. These authors have a unique aesthetic perspective, and are skilled sovereigns
of the literary wordsmithing. In being awarded The Formentor Prize, Annie
Ernaux becomes the first women since the fifty year hiatus to receive the
accolade.
Congratulations
to Annie Ernaux and her now solid foothold on the Global Stage.
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
For Further Reading:
Diario de Mallorca: "The Formentor Prize recognizes the intimate work of Annie Ernaux,"
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