The 2022 Nobel Prize for literature was today awarded to 82-year-old French writer Annie Ernaux. The decision was announced in Stockholm. 

Until the announcement of the award, the Nobel board had not yet been able to contact the writer.

The French writer won the prize for her "courage and clinical astuteness with which she uncovers the roots, detachments, and collective constraints of personal memory."

Ernaux, who writes novels about everyday life in France as well as non-fiction and is one of her country's most acclaimed authors, had been one of the favorites to win the prize.

Until the announcement of the award, the Nobel board had not yet been able to contact the writer.

Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee, said that in his work, "Ernaux consistently examines, and from different angles, a life marked by strong disparities in terms of gender, language and class."

Ernaux was born in 1940 and grew up in the small town of Yvetot in Normandy. She studied at the University of Rouen, and later taught high school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a teacher at the Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondance.

His debut was "Les armoires vides", published in 1974 in France and as "Cleaned Out" in English in 1990. It was his fourth book, "La place or A Man's Place," that was his literary breakthrough.

A Man's Place and A Woman's Story, originally published in 1988 in French, has become a contemporary classic in France. Ernaux won the Prix Renaudot in France in 2008 for her autobiography The Years, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019 when it was translated into English by Alison L Strayer.