The Young Man

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Annie Ernaux's most recent book, dazzling and breathtaking, published in France in 2022, is about her affair with a man 30 years her junior.

“A sublime book.” —Olivia de Lamberterie, Elle

Here, in a breathtakingly short book, Ernaux recounts a relationship that made her become again—for several months—the “scandalous girl” of her younger years. 

The book takes place in Rouen, where Ernaux studied in the early 1960s, and begins in a student apartment, where A. lives—we only know her lover’s initial. The windows of his apartment look out at the hospital where Ernaux experienced her secret abortion thirty years prior. A. takes the narrator back to memories her own youth and makes her feel ageless, outside of time—she has the sense that she is living her life backwards.

Here Ernaux again explores shame—she considers how A.’s friends ask him how he can be with a woman in menopause—and anticipation for their next encounter, quintessential and masterfully excavating themes from her previous books like Simple Passion and her New York Times bestseller Getting Lost.

“The whole book is fascinating, because it avoids the simplifications of unanimous hagiography. Of course, this volume is also a tribute, and on almost every page we read the signs of a fervent admiration.” —Le Monde