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PRIZE IN LITERATURE: Celebrate Annie Ernaux with this stunning collection of interviews, critical analyses, and 24 unpublished writings offering insight into her life, writing style, thoughts, and influence.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 The anthology includes twenty-four previously unpublished Ernaux pieces, as well as literary criticism, essays, interviews, diary entries, a song by Jeanne Cherhal, newspaper clippings, a comic strip by Aurélia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.

PIERRE-LOUIS FORT is a professor at CY Cergy Paris University. He is a specialist in 20th and 21st century French literature, and is also the author of essays including Critique et Littérature (Paris, 2008) and Simone de Beauvoir (Paris, 2016). He edited this book, which was published in 2022 in France as Cahier de L'Herne Annie Ernaux. The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, ANNIE ERNAUX is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Her other works include Exteriors, A Girl's Story, A Woman's Story, The Possession, Simple Passion, Happening, I Remain in Darkness, Shame, A Frozen Woman, A Man's Place, and The Young Man. ROS SCHWARTZ has translated a wide range of Francophone literary fiction, memoirs, nonfiction and literature for children and young adults. In 2009 she was awarded the distinction of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her services to literature. SOPHIE LEWIS is a translator and an editor working from French and Portuguese, and her translations have been shortlisted for the Scott Moncrieff and Republic of Consciousness prizes, and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. FRANK WYNNE is an Irish writer and translator and he chaired the jury of the 2022 Booker International. He has won numerous awards, and most recently his translation of The Art of Losing won the 2022 Dublin Literary Award. ALISON L. STRAYER is a Canadian writer and translator. Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Literature and for Translation, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and the Prix littéraire France-Québec. Translator EMMA RAMADAN is based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she co-owns Riffraff Bookstore and Bar. She's the recipient of an NEA fellowship, a Fulbright grant, and the 2018 Albertine Prize. DAN SIMON is founder and publisher of Seven Stories Press. His prior translations from the French include Van Gogh: Self Portraits, with accompanying letters from Vincent to his brother Theo by Pascal Bonafoux, and, with Carol Volk, Post-Impressionists by Guy Cogeval.

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