French writer Annie Ernaux wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Annie Ernaux, the French writer, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

According to the Nobel Assembly, Ernaux got the award “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.

The 82-year-old professor has written over 20 books — mostly autobiographies and memoirs.

Ernaux is the 16th French Nobel laureate. The award last went to France when Patrick Modiano clinched it in 2014.

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357).

“Annie Ernaux manifestly believes in the liberating force of writing. Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean. And when she with great courage and clinical acuity reveals the agony of the experience of class, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy or inability to see who you are, she has achieved something admirable and enduring,” Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel Committee, said.

Abdulrazaq Gurnah, the Tanzanian-born British novelist, won the literature prize last year.

He was awarded for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.