The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Annie Ernaux "for the courage and clinical insight with which she reveals the roots, departures and collective limitations of personal memory".
Annie Ernauz, who writes novels about everyday life in France, is one of France's most popular writers. She is the first French writer to win the Nobel since Patrick Modiano in 2014 and the 16th French woman to win the Nobel to date.
Anders Olsson, the chairman of the Nobel committee, said that in her work, "Ernaux repeatedly and from different perspectives examines a life marked by strong inequalities related to gender, language and class".
Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 and grew up in the small town of Yvetot in Normandy. Olsson said her "road to authorship was long and arduous."
A Man's Place and A Woman's Story, which were first published in 1988 in French, have become contemporary classics in France. Ernaux won the Renaudot Prize in France in 2008 for her autobiography The Years, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019 when it was translated into English by Alison L Strayer.
The Nobel Prize in literature is worth 10 million Swedish kroner (nearly 915,000 euros) and goes to the writer who is considered, according to Alfred Nobel's will, "the person who will have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".
