[Bbang Gubneun Tajagi] Such Honest and Intense Writing

Nobel Literature Prize Winner Ernaux's Latest Work
Using Her Own Story as Writing Material

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There has never been a writer as candid as Annie Ernaux. She speaks with terrifying honesty about women's desires and societal gaze, the economic, social, and cultural classes that no longer appear visible in modern society but still exist, and the taboos we all share regarding these issues.

As readers delve into Ernaux's stories of uncovering her wounds one by one, they come to see parts of themselves they had not yet recognized. Ernaux uses her own life as material for her writing. This book contains a complete chapter of her life.

The Young Man is the latest work by Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. It recounts her encounter with a young man in his twenties during her fifties. The manuscript, which had remained unfinished, was completed and published in May 2022.

Thirty years ago, Ernaux decided to write a book about illegal abortion but struggled with writing. During this time, she met a university student who declared himself a fan and sent her letters. The student's residence was none other than the place where Ernaux had spent her university days. His home was right next to the hospital where Ernaux was transported due to bleeding after an illegal abortion. Together, they retraced her past footsteps, embarking on a journey through time. She met her twenty-year-old self and her fifty-year-old self simultaneously.

The sight of a young man in his twenties whispering with a woman in her fifties at a restaurant, or holding hands on the street, attracts a mixture of criticism and envy from onlookers. Ernaux pays no mind. Her sole interest lies in the true meaning of the events that happened to her. Through her encounter with a man who closely resembles her younger self, she reopens the past she had hastily buried. Immersed in the pleasures and sorrows of repetition, Ernaux concludes her time travel and inner exploration and returns to writing. She severs ties with him and proceeds to write the novel Incident, which deals with her experience of illegal abortion thirty years ago.

The Young Man is Ernaux's new work released six years after A Girl's Story, receiving warm acclaim from French critics and readers upon publication. The Korean edition includes the full original French text. Ernaux's 2022 Nobel Prize acceptance speech is included as a separate booklet of twenty-six pages, offering an enjoyable read.

In her acceptance speech, Ernaux explains that to write her story, she had to break away from beautiful sentences?the kind she taught her students. To tell the real stories she experienced and felt, she needed noisy language accompanied by anger, mockery, and even vulgarity, which naturally came to her.

For her, writing seemed to be a liberation for oppressed groups such as women and classes. When clarifying internalized power relations of class, species, and gender?things only those affected can feel but society cannot openly discuss?the possibility of liberation arises not only for individuals but also for groups.

Ernaux concludes her acceptance speech by embracing the past she once wanted to escape. In her diary at age twenty-two, she wrote, "I will write to betray my species." But sixty years later, in her Nobel speech, she said, "I wanted to create a place in literature for men and women who died early, exhausted by labor."

The Young Man / Written by Annie Ernaux / Translated by Yoon Seokheon / Remo / 109 pages / 15,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.