Malin Ullgren: do not Forget about the crucial åttioåringen Annie Ernaux

Behind the recent years ' most high-profile and acclaimed French male author is a soon to be 80-year-old woman. Unfortunately it is true and nothing I can do anything about it, even if it is for sensitive ears can sound like a troublesome straddled the feminist claim.

But now, when Édouard Louis's book ”Who killed my father” comes out in Swedish in the next week, his sharp and sad portrayal of the French rural working class he was born in, there is every reason to remind about Annie Ernaux. In the 1980s she began to cultivate the field where sociology is transformed into fiction, where the individual sees himself through to also see the collective.

that pushed the combined cafe and specerihandel, Ernaux in a series of brilliant, autobiographical essays embodied what it means to be in the hard French class society to take it very long stride from the periphery to the intellectual center: to change the language even though you still speak French. To experience intense shame when you see your own background with the new medelklassblicken.

Annie Ernaux found a form for the class, experience and autobiography, as shown younger writers what they can actually do: call the shame methodically and give it a strong literary expression. Starting from the own experience, but never isolate the self from the world. Édouard Louis himself has spoken about the importance Ernaux had for his writing, as well as Didier Eribon (”Back to Reims”) also has been highlighted by her crucial role as a pioneer.

välläst also in Sweden, with fantastic stories of ”My father”, ”Woman”, ”the Senses of time” and ”Shame”. Later works have not been translated at all, which is a great pity.

Maybe have it with Édouard Louis Swedish success to do, now is Ernaux on the way back here too – the next year given her glorious ”Les Such” out of People, with the title ”the Years”.

also, Read the Édouard Louis: ”anyone who insulted a yellow west have insulted my father.”

and was one of six books on Tuesday went ahead to the so-called short list. And I can warmly recommend it, either you want to read in French or English already now, or when the English edition will 2020.

”the Years” came out in France back in 2008. It is an unusual autobiography, in which the self is sacrificed for the collective portrayal of France during the war years, until the 2010 century. The author sees the non-individual in her upbringing, in a way that is existential shattering and true. Soon there will be nobody anymore to know what she is talking about, who she was. And with her disappearance the voices of the older people who had experienced both world wars, who joked in a certain way, those who were starving and who dreamed about to die indoors.

if it is breathtaking in that worlds disappear while still living, then oneself, the language they had, the skin, the internal images. The absence of an I in the parts of her story are fascinating. On the one hand, such an intimate portrayal of be to that man, at the same time as Ernaux shows how I, it that has been so strong and important in life, will soon be completely abstract. Berättarperspektivet invite death.

So: please read Édouard Louis, ”Who killed my father?”. But do not remove Annie Ernaux, whose innovative piece of work went ahead.