blog — October 14

Announcing Two New Books from Annie Ernaux

PUBLISHING OCTOBER 27TH:
TWO NEW BOOKS BY ANNIE ERNAUX

We are delighted to announce the imminent publication of two brand new English translations of books by 2022 Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux: Hotel Casanova and Other Brief Texts, the first-ever collection of stories and essays by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer, and Writing, The Other Life: Text and Art by and About Annie Ernaux, edited by Pierre-Louis Fort and featuring translations by Alison L. Strayer, Ros Schwartz, Frank Wynne, Emma Ramadan, Dan Simon, and Sophie Lewis.

In twelve short texts written between 1984 and 2006, here is Annie Ernaux at her most incisive and intimate, presenting readers with yet another new experience of the razor’s edge of the author’s sensibility, this time in the form of brief works of fiction or nonfiction.

In “Hotel Casanova,” the title story of this collection, Ernaux describes a series of hotel-room trysts with a man who holds no interest for her other than sexually, just after her mother is admitted to hospital suffering from severe dementia. The story brilliantly captures the loss of sense of self, and at the same time the intense pleasure and pain that she experiences through a kind of cascade of alienation. Then, in “Histories,” Ernaux recalls a time in her childhood when she was the older girl responsible for a younger neighbor, holding her hand and bringing her to school and then home again, and the feelings of loss that ensued when this ended.

Another memory inhabits “Returns,” this time of her last visit to her mother at home, and how the collision of their two fragile emotional states plays out during the hours spent together, like a collision of the past and the future.

These personal narratives are joined by more journalistic essays on such themes as the true relationship between literature and politics, discourses on Cesare Pavese and Pierre Bourdieu—both of whom were major influences on Ernaux, though in very different ways—travel journals of Moscow, Leningrad, Leipzig, and short personal essays on writing and other subjects. A mix of seemingly unrelated texts that comprise the song of a considered life.

A stunning celebration of Annie Ernaux's work, featuring interviews, critical analyses, and 24 unpublished writings that offer unprecedented insight into her life, writing style, thoughts, and influence.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, 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 eight-page color photo insert with images, handwritten manuscript pages, and drawings sprinkled throughout. It is the fruit of collaboration between six celebrated translators, making this a groundbreaking work of scholarship and rumination.