Ernaux 'very happy and proud' to win Nobel for literature

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STORY: The French novelist Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, the first French woman to receive the honor.

Greeted by reporters as she left her home in the Paris suburb of Cergy-Pontoise, she said she learned the news on the radio. She declined to take questions, but said, "I'm very happy, I am proud, and that's it."

Ernaux, the daughter of grocers from Normandy in northern France, wrote about class and how she struggled to adopt the codes and habits of the French bourgeoisie while staying true to her working class background.

Here's how Anders Olson, a member of the Swedish Academy, described the literary laureate at a news conference announcing the Nobel Committee's decision:

"Annie Ernaux manifestly believes in the liberating force of writing. Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean. And when she, with courage and clinical acuity, uncovers the contradictions of social experience describing shame, humiliation, jealousy, or inability to see who we are, she has achieved something admirable and enduring."

Ernaux released her debut novel, Les Armoires Vides, in 1974. But she won international recognition after the publication of Les Annees in 2008, which was published in an English translation in 2017 under the title "The Years."