The Other Girl

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Annie Ernaux’s profound investigation into the life of her mysterious older sister, who died at six, two years before Annie was born.

In the summer of 1950, when Annie Ernaux is ten, she inadvertently learns she had a sister who died at six, two years before her own birth. Having believed she was an only child, she learns that she has replaced another daughter--＂the little saint,＂ ＂the absent one in every conversation,＂ who lives on in Annie’s parents’ wordless grief.

Taking the form of a letter to the unknown sister, The Other Girl was published in French in 2011 as part of the Affranchis collection (published by les éditions du Nil), which invited writers to compose ＂the letter they’d never written,＂ inspired by Kafka’s Letter to His Father. ＂I had to come to terms with this mysterious inconsistency: you, the good girl, were not saved, but I, the demon, survived. More than survived, was miraculously saved. So you had to die at six for me to come into the world and be saved.＂

The Other Girl by the 2022 Nobel Laureate appears now for the first time in an English language version, adding a necessary and wondrous piece to the great and ongoing puzzle that is the oeuvre of one of our greatest living writers, Annie Ernaux.

The author of some twenty works of fiction and memoir, ANNIE ERNAUX is considered by many to be France’s most important writer. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She has also won the Prix Renaudot for A Man’s Place and the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her body of work. More recently she received the International Strega Prize, the Prix Formentor, the French-American Translation Prize, and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for The Years, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Her other works include Exteriors, A Girl’s Story, A Woman’s Story, The Possession, Simple Passion, Happening, I Remain in Darkness, Shame, A Frozen Woman, A Man’s Place, The Young Man, and The Use of Photography.

ALISON L. STRAYER is a Canadian writer and translator. Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Literature and for Translation, the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, and the Prix littéraire France-Québec. She lives in Paris.