The Nobel Prize for Literature 2022

In news– Celebrated French memoirist Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature recently.

Annie Ernaux & her work-

She has been awarded the Nobel prize“for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”.
In her books spanning over six decades, Ernaux has chronicled events in her life ranging from growing up as the daughter of grocers to getting an abortion before it was legalised in France. Through these, she has also captured the anxieties and prevailing issues of her generation.
Her win has now put the spotlight on memoirs as a literary genre.
Ernaux has long been celebrated for her simple, yet effective prose detailing with depth the various events in her life that shaped it.
What sets her apart from most memoirists is her approach to exploring her own memories: she is acutely aware that they are not infallible, and thus, she distrusts her memory at every step, forever questioning and never settling on one truth.
An understanding of the role played by the historical and socio-political environment of the times she writes about is also central to her work.
In this sense, her writings are more comparable to that of an archaeologist than a novelist— for her, fragments and relics of personal memory are crucial to piecing together the history of an individual, and through that, a society.

Note:

Ernaux is the 16th French writer – the first Frenchwoman – and the 17th female author, to receive the literature prize.

What is a memoir?

A memoir is most easily defined as a non-fiction first-person narrative derived from the writer’s own memories and knowledge.
It is generally supposed to recount a ‘slice of life’ and not an entire lifetime.
Ideally, this slice would be about a particular aspect of or event in the author’s life that acts as the overarching theme in the narrative.

Difference between autobiography & memoir-

Though the terms are often used interchangeably, a memoir and an autobiography are distinctly different, but with a lot of overlap – both deal with facts, memories and personal knowledge of the author.
However, one basic difference is that an autobiography covers the entire span of the author’s life till the time of writing, whereas a memoir, as mentioned above, is supposed to be a ‘slice of life’.
Another major difference is that an autobiography is usually written by an already famous or noteworthy person. A memoir, on the other hand, can be written by anyone with a story to tell.
For example, Frank McCourt, an Irish-American teacher in New York City, wrote about his impoverished childhood in Angela’s Ashes, for which he later won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.
Another difference is the style of writing usually seen in these genres. Autobiographies tend to highlight facts and the role played by the author in important historical events.
Memoirs, meanwhile, place greater emphasis on the author’s interior journey, and are more introspective in nature.
Lastly, an autobiography is more often than not written in chronological order.
Memoirs tend to have non-linear narration, with episodes from different parts of the author’s life woven in together.