Simple Passion
Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie (translation)"The triumph of Ms Ernaux's approach… is to cherish commonplace emotions while elevating the banal expression of them… A monument to passions that defy simple explanations.” — The New York Times Book Review
Blurring the line between fact & fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional & physical course of her 2-year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, & person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference.
“All this - the suffering & anxiety of waiting, the brief soulagement of lovemaking, the lethargy & fatigue that follow, the renewal of desire, the little indignities & abjections of both obsession & abandonment - Ernaux tells with calm, almost tranquillized matter-of-factness [that] feels like determination, truth to self, clarity of purpose.” — The Washington Post
With courage & exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.
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Annie Ernaux is a French writer. She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father & her experiences growing up in a small town in France, & her subsequent process of moving into adulthood & away from her parents' place of origin.
Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, & later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance. In 2017, Annie Ernaux was awarded the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her life’s work. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.