Writing, the Other Life

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE: Celebrate Annie Ernaux with this stunning collection of interviews, critical analyses, and 24 unpublished writings offering insight into her life, writing style, thoughts, and influence. Drawings, photos, handwritten manuscripts, and other visual materials make this a beautiful keepsake for new and longtime fans. Magisterial in scope and size, Annie Ernaux: Writing, The Other Life was compiled and edited by Pierre-Louis Fort and was first published in France by Éditions de L'Herne in 2022, a few months before she received the Nobel Prize in Literature. The anthology includes twenty-four previously unpublished Ernaux pieces, as well as literary criticism, essays, interviews, diary entries, a song by Jeanne Cherhal, newspaper clippings, a comic strip by Aurélia Aurita, letters from Simone de Beauvoir. Never before published in English, this beautifully visual collection includes an 8-page color photo insert with images, handwritten manuscript pages, and drawings sprinkled throughout. It is the fruit of collaboration between six celebrated translators and a groundbreaking work of scholarship and rumination.

Annie Ernaux

Table of Contents Pierre-Louis Fort Foreword Jeanne Cherhal I am reading / read you I “To avenge my people” (Translated by Alison Strayer) Annie Ernaux The Tree, 1963 – unpublished Poems of youth –1962 ARCHIVE: The opening of a novel written in seventh grade Annie Ernaux Vocation?, 1999 Writing (I), unpublished excerpts from the journal, 1963-1985 Simone de Beauvoir Letter, 1974 Jean Roudaut Postcard, 1974 Simone de Beauvoir Letter, 1977 Benoîte Groult Letter, 1981 Annie Ernaux The Place of the Reader, 1997 Pierre-Louis Fort A “Place” Apart Dominique Barbéris An Art in this Openly Asserted Absence of Art Nicola Lagioia A Man’s Place: Reparation and Betrayal ARCHIVE: Manuscript of La Place (A Man’s Place) and facsimile of the list of possible titles Annie Ernaux “Because the book I write about her must be beautiful or not at all.” 1986 – unpublished Pierre Desproges Letter Patrice Robin “Truth and Advice” II “To Give Form Through Writing” (Translated by Emma Ramadan) Annie Ernaux Words Like Stains, 1998-1999 – unpublished Isabelle Desesquelles The Fabric of Time Maya Lavault Towards and Against Proust Annie Ernaux On Proust, 1983-1988 – unpublished A Prize, 2017 Kyo, 1999; 2006 – unpublished Annie Ernaux and Frédéric-Yves Jeannet “Who is this me who travels?” – unpublished interview Barbara Havercroft “I’m no fucking plumber!”: Annie Ernaux and Feminisim Hélène Gestern We Don’t Write Alone III Happening (Translated by Sophie Lewis) Geneviève Brisac Happening, Or Twenty Years Later Nathalie Kuperman The Dinner Françoise Gillard “I Shall Remember” Annie Ernaux On Happening, 2000 IV Cinema, Photography, Theatre (Translated by Emma Ramadan) Film Danielle Arbid Annie, A Punk Annie Ernaux “Write” (II), diary extracts, 1991 – unpublished Anne Coudreuse The Me in the Mirror Audrey Diwan Annie Ernaux – Justness Photography Dominique Cabrera With the Leica Annie Ernaux “I Have Cancer in My Right Breast,” 2002-3 – unpublished Aurélia Aurita The Uses of Drawing Isabelle Roussel-Gillet Facing Photographs, with Annie Ernaux Annie Ernaux “The Stunners” – a Drawing: ‘Les Femmes Qui Rient’ (‘The Laughing Women’) by Mylène Besson Theatre Jeanne Champagne Finding the Form Dominique Blanc Joy and Courage V The Years (Translated by Alison Strayer) Annie Ernaux The third millennium, 1999 – unpublished Birthday, 2002 – unpublished Delphine de Vigan The Book of a Lifetime Annie Ernaux and Bernard Desportes Epistolary dialogues about The Years (December 2007 – February 2008) Bruno Blanckeman Du romanesque malgré tout Annie Ernaux Writing (III), diary extracts, 2001-7 – unpublished Alison L. Strayer Translating The Years: a question of breath VI Geographies (Translated by Ros Schwartz) Annie Ernaux Yvetot, 1968-2005 – unpublished Annecy, 1998 – unpublished Rouen, 2000 – unpublished Michelle Porte and Pierre-Louis Fort “Writing that inhabits the other, truly, completely” – unpublished interview Joëlle Pagès-Lindon “Words As Stones” Lauren Elkin The City and the Suburb: the “extimate” diaries of Annie Ernaux Régis Sauder I Have Loved Living Here. Writing a screenplay with Annie Ernaux Annie Ernaux Speech Given at the University of Cergy-Pontoise, 2014 – unpublished Tiphaine Samoyault The New Town ENGLAND Élise Hugueney-Léger The Life of Annie Ernaux’s Writings Annie Ernaux and Lyn Thomas “English literature was my real gateway into England” – unpublished interview Annie Ernaux I turned twenty in Finchley, a London suburb – unpublished TRAVELS Annie Ernaux “America day by day,” 1990 – unpublished Austria, Slovakia, Romania, 1993, 1998 – unpublished Egypt, 1994 – unpublished Korea, 1994 – unpublished Venice, 1982-2009 – unpublished VII A Girl’s Story (Translated by Alison Strayer) Isabelle Charpentier Readings of A Girl’s Story Fabrice Thumerel An Other (Memory): a Girl’s/ Girls’ Stories Annie Ernaux “Writing” (IV), excerpts from the journal, 2008-2012 VIII The Real Without Me and Within (Translated by Frank Wynne) Auto-Socio-Biography Françoise Simonet-Tenant Annie Ernaux and emancipation, or how to find one’s place? Gisèle Sapiro An Ethnography of Symbolic Violence Ivan Jablonka I, She, We Nicolas Mathieu The Most Appropriate, Most Succint Words Annie Ernaux Bourdieu: The grief, 2002 “It was something I had to do, a debt,” 2002 – unpublished School, Teaching and Religion Annie Ernaux The Exam, 1971 – unpublished Véronique Jacob Annie Ernaux, a ‘classic’ of the classroom. Annie Ernaux French Class, 2011 Nathalie Froloff The Empty Tomb: Religion in the Work of Annie Ernaux “Within and Without” Annie Ernaux The External Life (further), 2000-2001 Alexandre Gefen Annie Ernaux,Politics Aurélie Adler A Girl’s Story: Writing in / with the Gaps of History Annie Ernaux With the Smile of Saint-Just, 1988 Europe and the Freedom of Women, 2016 May 1st, Imposter Altert! 2012 Lila, Soror, 2019 Politics and Society, 1981-2013 – unpublished IX New Enquiries / Openings / Overtures (Translated by Dan Simon) Annie Ernaux The Formentor Prize, 2019 Annie Ernaux The Memories of Rooms and Other Places, 1989-1998 – unpublished Annie Ernaux and Pierre-Louis Fort ‘It’s the books that live, not me’ – unpublished interview A Timeline Contributors