Stockholm, Sweden/ Cergy, France October 6, 2022

This year’s 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature winner is French writer Annie Ernaux as a surprise selection. The 82-year-old writer is known for works that blur the line between memoir and fiction. Ms. Ernaux was on the betting list at Ladbrokes Coral, the leading London betting parlor, of writers for this years Nobel Prize in London. Every year Ladbrokes Coral releases a list of leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the most popular and valuable of the Nobel Prizes.

Ernaux was considered a long shot on a list that included better-known name writers such as Margaret Atwood and Anne Carson (both Canadians), Haruki Murakami (Japan), Edna O’Brien (Ireland), and Salman Rushdie (India) for the Nobel. The selection of Ernaux is considered a breakthrough as all previous winners of the French Nobels were all male. The difference this year was pointed out by Dr Ruth Cruickshank, an academic who specialises in contemporary French literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. She pointed out that all previous French writers in the 20th^th and 21st^st centuries since 1901 who won the Nobel Prize were “thirteen dead and two living white French men Nobel laureates.”

The Nobel citation for the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, declared Ernaux “has created an uncompromising” 50-year body of work exploring a life marked by great disparities regarding gender, language and class.”

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the most valued award in the world of literature, with an award this year of € 900,000 Euros (with a conversion rate to $896,000 US dollars).

Steven Ford Brown