Sex, Time, and Memory: Annie Ernaux’s Young Man, by Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee Book Reviews [email protected] Mon, 08/21/2023 - 15:04 The Young Man—forthcoming from Seven Stories in September 2023—is Annie Ernaux’s first novel in English translation after receiving the most coveted honor in literature, the Nobel Prize in Literature, in October 2022 (see WLT’s review of Le Jeune Homme, May 2023, 73). A slim book of autofiction, translated by Alison Strayer, it is a few pages shorter than Simple Passion (1991), her shortest book so far. With deft terseness, Ernaux recounts her short relationship with a student thirty years younger than her. The epigraph reiterates the raison d’être of her writing: living is incomplete without evaluating life’s experiences. Life is spontaneous facticity, spent in accordance with one’s desires and impulses. Writing throws new light on life. It unearths, as Ernaux puts it in The Girl’s Story (2016), something that is irreducible to any singular explanation. In a startling sentence at the beginning of The Young Man, Ernaux equates writing with the need and possibility of overcoming “the fatigue, the dereliction” of sex and the violence of orgasm. She feels writing brings “greater pleasure” than sex, because it doesn’t abandon you to a postcoital void. It is reminiscent of Roland Barthes’s idea of body-writing in The Pleasure of the Text (1973), of writing as a fragmented overcoming of... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2023-08-21 20:04:48 UTC ]
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Raymond AntrobusWho/ What inspired you to start writing? I never started writing poetry with the intention of writing books until publishers approached me. I was happy to write poems and travel and read the poems for audiences. I live poem by poem. The idea of a book of poems doesn’t really... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-12-05 12:09:15 UTC ]
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Multi-award winning poet Raymond Antrobus has been named winner of the 2019 Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award for his debut The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-05 08:18:28 UTC ]
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From meditations on the d/Deaf experience to short stories blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, from mixing the personal and political to a young woman uncover the truth about her family’s past – four outstanding writers have today been named on the shortlist for The Sunday... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-11-04 12:55:09 UTC ]
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The novel argues for the right to sexual relations without the frisson of sexual relations. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-06-03 15:15:03 UTC ]
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Will Young is "calling for an end to society’s legacy of gay shame" in a "taboo-breaking" manifesto-memoir, How to Be A Gay Man (Virgin Books). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-04-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award has announced changes to its sponsorship with the University of Warwick its title partner and Caroline Michel, c.e.o. of literary agency Peters Fraser + Dunlop, becoming its first patron. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-04-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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William Cooper, author of 'Behold a Pale Horse,' did not plan to make his life into a harrowing saga of American despair, but that’s how it turned out. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2018-09-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The image of furious rows and storming-outs is not one that I recognise but an industry concoction to glamorise publishingThe Man Booker prize is airing its dirty linen, celebrating its 50th birthday by drip-feeding bits of gossip and scandal from judging meetings, ceremonies and parties through... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Annie Ernaux is ruthless. I mean that as a compliment. Perhaps no other memoirist — if, in fact, memoir-writing is what Ernaux is up to, which both is and isn’t the case — is so willing to interrogate not only the details of her life but also the slippery question of identity. Beginning with her... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2018-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Until now, Irish authors without a UK publisher had been excluded from the coveted prize for literary fictionAn anomaly in the Man Booker prize rules that made books published in Ireland ineligible for the £50,000 award because they were not published in the UK has been removed, after years of... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Two Faber & Faber releases are among the expanded shortlist announced this weekend (October 29) for the Irish and UK author 35 or younger. The post The Sunday Times Prize Jury Names Five Young Writers to Shortlist appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-10-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Was it a spark of genius that struck as they had pen in hand, or was it plain old luck? Either way, it earned a first-time children's illustrator and first-time children's writer spots on the list of NZ Book Award finalists alongside their idols. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2017-07-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A rarity among major prize programs, the Young Writer of the Year Award welcomes the entries of work by self-publishing writers as well as trade authors. The post The UK’s Sunday Times / PFD Young Writer Competition Opens to Trade Authors and Indies appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2017-04-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As Nikesh Shukla crowdfunds for a new essay collection, he talks about why young writers need to be given a platform. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2017-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Baroness Lola Young OBE will chair the judges for the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-12-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Granta editorial director Max Porter is among three debut authors shortlisted for The Sunday Times/ Peters Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2016-11-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Southern California man who pointed a shotgun at a 7-year-old girl selling Girl Scout cookies has been given six months in jail. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The Riverside Press-Enterprise says John Dodrill was sentenced Friday. He pleaded guilty to possessing an illegal... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2016-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A woman was held captive in a closet and sexually abused by a Richmond, Calif., man she met on Facebook a year ago, police said. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2015-07-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Last Wednesday, the Times published a front-page story about the movie and real-estate mogul Wang Jianlin, who is the richest man in Asia, worth an estimated thirty-five billion dollars. The former People’s Liberation Army foot soldier has ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2015-05-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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How a teenager got acclaimed comics artists Jeff Smith, Lucy Knisley and Hope Larson to blurb her self-published book. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2015-03-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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