Exteriors

Taking the form of random journal entries over the course of seven years, Exteriors concentrates on the ephemeral encounters that take place just on the periphery of a person's lived environment. Ernaux captures the feeling of contemporary living on the outskirts of Paris: poignantly lyrical, chaotic, and strangely alive. Exteriors is in many ways the most ecstatic of Ernaux's books - the first in which she appears largely free of the haunting personal relationships she has written about so powerfully elsewhere, and the first in which she is able to leave the past behind her.

Review:

'I find her work extraordinary.'
- Eimear McBride, author of Strange Hotel

'Admirable for its quiet grace as well as its audacity in a willingness to note (and thus make noteworthy) the smallest parts of life. It's a masterclass in understatement, a quality difficult to find nowadays, in literature or life.'
- Lucy Sweeney-Byrne, Irish Times

'Reading her is like getting to know a friend, the way they tell you about themselves over long conversations that sometimes take years, revealing things slowly, looping back to some parts of their life over and over'
- Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books

'The book is at once lyrical and unruly. It's a story of fleeting encounters, overheard conversations and clear-sighted observations that will make you pay attention to the seemingly ephemeral details of ordinary life.'
- Monocle

'Annie Ernaux is one of my favourite contemporary writers, original and true. Always after reading one of her books, I walk around in her world for months.'
- Sheila Heti, author of Pure Colour

Prizes: Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 (Sweden).