Get your first unruly read for just £9.95 (£13.00) when you select monthly rolling. Use code WELCOME.

Book preview

A Woman's Story

by Annie Ernaux

Translated from French by Tanya Leslie.

Published 2024

Paperback, 72 pages

Price: £9.99

In Stock

Add to basket
Want free delivery?

Join Good Book Club and enjoy exclusive member perks – like unlimited free delivery across our site. Plus:

  1. A brilliant newly-released book from an indie publisher delivered every month
  2. Free access to author events online and in-person
  3. Monthly extras you actually want – like signed copies and notes from authors

Join now for free delivery

Synopsis

On 7 April 1986, Annie Ernaux’s mother, after years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died in a retirement home in the suburbs of Paris. Shocked by this loss which, despite her mother’s condition, she had refused to fathom,...

Show more

On 7 April 1986, Annie Ernaux’s mother, after years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died in a retirement home in the suburbs of Paris. Shocked by this loss which, despite her mother’s condition, she had refused to fathom, Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time in an effort to recover the different facets of a woman whose openness to the world and appetite for reading created the conditions for the author’s own social ascent.

Mirroring A Man’s Place, in which she narrates her father’s slow rise to material comfort, A Woman’s Story explores the ambiguous and unshakeable bond between mother and daughter, its fluctuation over the course of their lives, the alienating worlds that separate them and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. In this quietly powerful tribute to the last thread connecting her to the world out of which she was born, Ernaux attempts to do her mother the greatest justice she can: to portray her as the individual she was.

Show less

  • Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d’Enseignement par Correspondance. In 2017, Annie Ernaux was awarded the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her life’s work. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

  • Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent publisher specialising in contemporary fiction and long-form essays. Founded in 2014, it focuses on ambitious, imaginative and innovative writing, both in translation and in the English language.

    See all books by Fitzcarraldo Editions

More books from Fitzcarraldo Editions