In her latest work, Annie Ernaux recounts a relationship with a student thirty years her junior – an experience that transforms her, briefly, back into the ‘scandalous girl’ of her youth. When she is with him, she replays scenes she has already lived through, feeling both ageless and closer to death. Laid like a palimpsest on the present, the past’s immediacy pushes her to take a decisive step in her writing – producing, in turn, the need to expunge her lover. At once stark and tender, The Young Man is a taut encapsulation of Ernaux’s relationship to time, memory and writing.
Sobre o autor
Alison L. Strayer is a Canadian writer and translator. Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Literature and Translation, the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, and longlisted for the Prix Albertine. Her translation of The Years by Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2018 French-American Prize, shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019, and awarded the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, honouring both author and translator.