Nobel award in literature 2022

Along the quay, the great ships,  that ride the swell in silence,

take no notice of the cradles,  that the hands of the women rock.

.. .. … ..

But the day of farewells will come, when the women must weep,

and curious men are tempted  towards the horizons that lure them!

 

Prize motivation: “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.

It is all about ‘Nobel Prize in Literature’ is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who will receive the prize. The academy announces the name of the laureate in early October. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895. Literature is traditionally the final award presented at the Nobel Prize ceremony. On some occasions the award has been postponed to the following year !  

Cleaned Out tells the story of Denise Lesur, a 20-year-old woman suffering the after-effects of a back-alley abortion. Alone in her college dorm room, Denise attempts to understand how her suffocating middle-class upbringing has brought her to such an awful present.  The author, one of France's most important contemporary writers, daringly breaks with formal French literary tradition in this moving novel about abortion, growing up, and coming to terms with one's childhood.    

Since the publication of her first book, Cleaned Out, in 1974, Annie Ernaux’s writing has continued to explore not only her own life experience but also that of her generation, her parents, women, anonymous others encountered in public space, the forgotten. The main themes threaded through her work over more than four decades, are: the body and sexuality; intimate relationships; social inequality and the experience of changing class through education; time and memory; and the overarching question of how to write these life experiences.  

She is the subject matter of this post as the French author Annie Ernaux has won the 2022 Nobel prize in literature at the age of 82. Of the 119 awarded, Ernaux is only the 18th woman Nobel laureate in literature and the first French woman to have won the prize.

The French woman has been awarded Prize in Literature for "the courage and clinical acuity" in her largely autobiographical books examining personal memory and social inequality. Having published three autobiographical novels (Cleaned Out, What they say goes and The Frozen Woman), Ernaux turned away from fiction with the publication of A Man’s Place.

The words at the start are from the poem written by Prudhomme.  René François Armand "Sully" Prudhomme (1839 – 1907) was a French poet and essayist,  the first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901. Born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, but turned to philosophy and later to poetry; he declared it as his intention to create scientific poetry for modern times. In character sincere and melancholic, he was linked to the Parnassus school, although, at the same time, his work displays characteristics of its own.

A Literature Nobel Prize laureate earns a gold medal, a diploma bearing a citation, and a sum of money.  The amount of money awarded depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation that year.  If a prize is awarded to more than one laureate, the money is either split evenly among them or, for three laureates, it may be divided into a half and two-quarters.   

 
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
13.10.2022.