Simple Passion WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Annie Ernaux is one of my favourite contemporary writers, original and true. Always after reading one of her books, I walk around in her world for months. Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood The triumph of Ernauxs approach ... is to cherish commonplace emotions while elevating the banal expression of them.... A monument to passions that defy simple explanations. New York Times I devoured not once, but twice Fitzcarraldos new English edition of Simple Passion, in which the great Annie Ernaux describes the suspended animation of a love affair with a man who is not free. Every paragraph, every word, brought me closer to a state of purest yearning. Rachel Cooke, Observer What mesmerizes here, as elsewhere in Ernauxs oeuvre, is the interplay between the solipsistic intensity of the material and its documentary, disinterested, almost egoless presentation. Reminiscent of the poet Denise Rileys Time Lived, Without its Flow, a study of how grief mangles chronology, Simple Passion is a riveting investigation, in a less tragic key, into what happens to ones experience of time in the throes of romantic obsession. Lola Seaton, New Statesman All this the suffering and anxiety of waiting, the brief soulagement of lovemaking, the lethargy and fatigue that follow, the renewal of desire, the little indignities and abjections of both obsession and abandonment Ernaux tells with calm, almost tranquillized matter-of-factness [that] feels like determination, truth to self, clarity of purpose. Washington Post Simple Passion ... delivers a heart-rending story of a scorching love affair, down to the tiny details, in just 48 pages. Its a little masterpiece. Orna Mulcahy, The Gloss A stunning story, despite its detachment and the careful exclusions of any excess, that pulsates with the very passion Ernaux so truthfully describes.... Small, but abundantly wise. Kirkus A work of lyrical precision and diamond-hard clarity. New Yorker

Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National dEnseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Mans Place and A Womans Story, have become contemporary classics in France. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.