Throughout the entire interview, my only concern was honesty and accuracy; the latter actually troubled me more than the former.
It is not easy to summarize, without unifying or constraining to certain principles, a writing practice that began thirty years ago. To let the inevitable contradictions of it become apparent. To provide specific details about what clearly slips away from time into consciousness.
For everything that connects the phrases of my books, chooses their words, this is my desire, and I cannot convey it to others since it escapes even from me. However, I believe I can demonstrate the aim of my texts, to reveal my own "reasons" for writing.
A conversation between the author and Frédéric-Yves Jeannet, which sheds light on Annie Ernaux's writing "workshop."
Read an excerpt
For the past fifteen years, because of my books, I have traveled quite a bit, to many countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North America, thus fulfilling the great childhood dream of leaving home and exploring the world. Aside from a trip to Lourdes, I had not left Normandy until I was nineteen; I went to Paris for the first time at twenty-one. However, often, in the hotel room where I stay abroad, I am surprised to find myself there, feeling no happiness. It seems to me like I am participating in a movie, as an extra. There is a Japanese, a Korean, an Egyptian film... During travel, I do not experience things intensely. In such trips, that is, official ones, where the conditions are generally artificial and the routes are marked, I do not truly immerse myself in the country. What I dreamed of as a child was the adventure of traveling. In these specific trips, that does not happen.
