Modern French Writers – serie

In this first critical study in English to focus exclusively on Annie Ernaux’s writing trajectory, Siobhán McIlvanney provides a stimulating and challenging analysis of Ernaux’s individual texts. Following a broadly feminist hermeneutic, this study engages in a series of provocative close readings of Ernaux’s works in a move to highlight the contradictions and nuances in her writing, and to demonstrate the intellectual intricacies of her literary project. By so doing, it seeks to introduce new readers to Ernaux’s works, while engaging on less familiar terrain those already familiar with her writing.

Conceived as a second edition to Kawakami's acclaimed A Self-Conscious Art, which was the first full-length study in English of Patrick Modiano’s work, this book has been comprehensively updated with two new chapters, notably discussing the author's recent work and his Nobel Prize win. Kawakami shows how by parodying precursors such as Proust or the nouveau romanciers, Modiano's narratives are built around a profound lack of faith in the ability of writing to retrieve the past through memory, and this failure is acknowledged in the discreet playfulness that characterises his novels.This welcome update on the work of one of the most successful modern French novelists will be essential reading for scholars working on contemporary French writing.