ONE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT claims that all literature is political: what matters in a work is the worldview it reflects. It may not be the way most people enjoy books, but it is an academic approach.
But that political prism is relevant — indeed inescapable — when a writer claims it for herself — as is the case for Annie Ernaux, who last October became the first Frenchwoman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Regarded as a master of autofiction, she has written about her life and times for almost five decades. In her acceptance speech in Stockholm in December, Ernaux highlighted the activist nature of her art: coming from a humble background — her parents ran a provincial café-cum-grocery shop — she vowed early on to “avenge my race”.
By that phrase, which crops up throughout her work, she means the line of “landless peasants, workers, shopkeepers despised for their accent and their lack of culture” from whom she is descended. After her promotion
