Happening
Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie (translation)In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 & unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her & her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child.
"Happening recounts what it was like to be a young woman whose life changed — & world ominously narrowed — in 1963 with an unwanted pregnancy... It feels urgently of the moment." — The New York Times
This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful & desperate, she finally located an abortionist & ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies.
In Happening, Annie Ernaux sifts through her memories & her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.
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Annie Ernaux is a French writer. She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father & her experiences growing up in a small town in France, & her subsequent process of moving into adulthood & away from her parents' place of origin.
Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, & 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.