French author Annie Ernaux during a press conference after being announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in Paris on October 6, 2022. The 82-year-old author was recognized for “the courage and critical acuity with which uncovers the collective roots, alienations and limitations of personal memory,” the Nobel committee said.

Since publication of what’s widely regarded as her masterpiece, 2008’s The Years, French writer Annie Ernaux has been considered a favourite to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Through her works, Ernaux has almost single-handedly created a new literary genre, the collective autobiography, which delivers deep and original reflections on the construction of memory.

Thus, when Ernaux was announced as this year’s winner on October 8, it came as no great surprise to most literary experts.

Right now, however, amid the debates over abortion rights unleashed by the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States, bestowing the prize on Ernaux inevitably casts the spotlight most directly on another of her works – The Happening, a short book in which she recounts her experience of having an illegal abortion in 1963.

The book was made into a movie last year that won the Golden Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival, and is likely to gain a boost from Thursday’s Nobel announcement. Many critics have praised the film as a harrowing window onto the realities that might once again face desperate women in a post-Roe world.

In that light, it’s worth taking a close look at Ernaux’s 2000 memoir of her abortion – including, perhaps, a few of the questions it leaves unanswered.

To begin with, it must be said that no matter what side one takes on today’s abortion debates, The Happening is a valuable contribution simply as a description of one woman’s experience. The problem with many political arguments in the age of virtual reality is that they’re detached from the concreteness of life, with flesh-and-blood people turned into caricatures and complex issues transformed into slogans.

Without giving too much away, Ernaux describes becoming unexpectedly pregnant as a young university student in the fall of 1963, and then her increasingly desperate quest to rid herself of the pregnancy. Eventually she ends up in the hands of an underground abortionist in Paris whom she pays 400 Francs, the equivalent of about $1,200 in today’s money.

Although the procedure succeeds in inducing a miscarriage, complications land Ernaux in the hospital. In time she recovers and goes on with her life, eventually having two children, sons named Eric and David.

First of all, in Ernaux’s account no one among her tight circle of friends and confidantes ever suggested having the child and giving it up for adoption, presumably because the social stigma and shame regarding pregnancy due to sex outside marriage in 1960s-era France meant there were precious few resources available for women in such a situation.

Ernaux is a bright, insightful thinker, and surely she recognizes the psychological dynamics of dehumanization and depersonalization involved in the use of that sort of language. It would be interesting to hear her mature reflections on what it suggests about the act of abortion that she felt compelled to employ such terminology.

Second, in describing her encounters with the underground abortionist, Ernaux recalls that their conversations were entirely practical: When was her last period, how much would the procedure cost, what the technique involved.

Ernaux then writes: “By experience, Madame P-R knew that a conversation confined to basics avoided the tears and emotional outbursts that might lead the girls to procrastinate or even change their minds.”

Again, one would like to ask, what does it say about abortion that a practitioner would learn to avoid discussing its emotional impact?

Finally, as a sort of footnote, Ernaux, who grew up in a solidly Catholic home, describes going to a priest for confession after the abortion was over, only to feel that he treated her as a criminal. As a result, she writes, “I realized that I was through with religion.”

Thus Annie Ernaux sets out her goals for the memoir as she writes it, and they become part of the book itself. The Years is not just her own story but a chronicle of her generation—which also happens to be mine. Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 in Lillebonne, a small village in northern France, I in 1943 in Franklin Square, a hamlet on Long Island, New York. But in spite of geographic displacement and points of reference, we are united by shared history and experience

Ernaux is a prominent French novelist who has published more than 20 books since 1974. Yet she has dwelt under the radar of American readers, even though 12 have been translated into English, and two—A Man’s Place in 1992 (La Place, 1984) and A Woman’s Story in 2003 (Une Femme, 1989)—were named New York Times

In an interview she said, “Yes, half the day, since I only learned that I received the prize around one o’clock. And the press conference went very well, because I think that I answered what it means for me to receive the prize, that it’s a great responsibility and at the same time an honour. But that precisely because of this honour I have more responsibilities regarding… regarding my engagement in writing.

What an exciting way to receive the news!

“Yes, it’s obviously very surprising. All the more because I was alone. It’s like… I will give you a comparison. You are in the desert and there is a call that is coming from the sky. That was sort of the feeling I had.

What a fun story, anyway! You have a long bibliography. For someone just discovering your work, where to start?

“You know, I think my books don’t resemble each other. From the perspective of both the topics and content, and sometimes even from a writing perspective. So it’s a little bit difficult and it would be a different recommendation for young people and older people. But the book that would possibly bring together everyone would be The Years. Yes.”

OK! You mentioned young people. Do you have a message for young writers, especially for those who are writing in their native language?

“ I think that when we write, what is really important is that we need to read a lot. Sometimes young people say, “Oh no, I don’t read… I write!” Well, no. That’s not possible. You need to read a lot. And the second message I would give them is not to strive to write well, but rather to write honestly. It’s not the same thing.”