Annie Ernaux's father died exactly two months after she passed her practical examination for a teaching certificate. Barely educated and valued since childhood strictly for his labor, Ernaux's father had grown into a hard, practical man who showed his family little affection.
Narrating his slow ascent towards material comfort, Ernaux's cold observation reveals the shame that haunted her father throughout his life. She scrutinizes the importance he attributed to manners and language that came so unnaturally to him as he struggled to provide for his family with a grocery store and cafe in rural France.
Over the course of the book, Ernaux grows up to become the uncompromising observer now familiar to the world, while her father matures into old age with a staid appreciation for life as it is and for a daughter he cautiously, even reluctantly admires. A Man's Place is the companion book to her critically acclaimed memoir about her mother, A Woman's Story.
Among the most influential and impactful writers in the world today, ANNIE ERNAUX was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place and both the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize and the Prix Formentor for her body of work. She was awarded the International Strega Prize, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Cleaned Out, Do What They Say or Else, A Frozen Woman, A Man’s Place, A Woman’s Story, Simple Passion, Exteriors, Shame, “I Remain in Darkness,” Happening, Things Seen, Getting Lost, The Possession, The Use of Photography (with Marc Marie), The Years, The Other Girl, L’Atelier Noir, Retour à Yvetot, Look at the Lights, My Love, Le Vrai Lieu: Entretiens, A Girl’s Story, L’Ecriture comme un couteau, Hôtel Casanova and Other Brief Texts, The Young Man, and I Will Write to Avenge My People: The Nobel Lecture.
TANYA LESLIE was the first translator of Annie Ernaux into English and translated a number of her works, including A Woman’s Story (1991), A Man’s Place (1992), Simple Passion (1993), Shame (1998), I Remain in Darkness (1999) and Happening (2001).
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