Who is Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize for Literature 2022?

Annie Ernaux – Picture by Ansa Foto

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Annie Ernaux, French writer, author of the 2008 novel Les Années.

The motivation of the Swedish Academy: “For the courage and clinical acuity with which he revealed the roots, the remoteness and the collective bonds of personal memory”.

Annie Ernaux is 82 years old and the seventeenth woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Rumors of possible winners: among them also Elena Ferrante

While waiting for the announcement, rumors and gossip about eligible names were circulating. Among them, the Japanese author Haruki Murakami, the Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, author of the bestseller Satanic Verses, victim of a stab wound in recent months. Horror king Stephen King was also among the eligible candidates, along with American literature master Don DeLillo, French author Michel Houellebecq, Milan Kundera, Peter Nadas, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edna O’Brien, Elena Ferrante, László, Norwegian Jon Fosse, Russian Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Ernaux.

Last year, the Nobel Prize for Literature was won by British-naturalized Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent. In 2020, however, it went to Louise Glük, a graduate poet and Pulitzer winner.

The other 2022 Nobel laureates

The awarding of the 2022 Nobel Prizes began on Monday, with that of Medicine to Swede Svante Paabo, who studied the DNA of Neanderthals to reveal our history. Tuesday, October 4, the three pioneers of quantum computing, the Frenchman Alain Aspect, the American John Clauser and the Austrian Anton Zeilinger, were chosen for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Yesterday, Wednesday October 5, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless the 2022 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, “for the development of a new way to assemble new molecules”.

Tomorrow the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize

Tomorrow, Friday October 6, the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded and Monday October 10 will be Economy Day.

The winners will receive the sum of 10 million Swedish crowns (920 thousand euros) for each discipline. The attribution procedures were decided by its inventor, Alfred Nobel. The latter wrote in his will that the prize would go to the person who would best contribute to the well-being of humanity.