The Young Man - WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

In her latest work, Annie Ernaux recounts a relationship with a student thirty years her junior - an experience that transforms her, briefly, back into the `scandalous girl' of her youth. When she is with him, she replays scenes she has already lived through, feeling both ageless and closer to death. Laid like a palimpsest on the present, the past's immediacy pushes her to take a decisive step in her writing - producing, in turn, the need to expunge her lover. At once stark and tender, The Young Man is a taut encapsulation of Ernaux's relationship to time, memory and writing.