BEIJING: After French writer Annie Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature earlier this month, the Chinese versions of her works A Woman’s Story and La Place saw a surge in sales.
The publishing house Shanghai People’s Press announced it will reprint the books, published in Chinese in 2003, and they are expected to hit the market later this month.
The translator of the novels, Guo Yumei, a professor in French language and translation at Tianjin Foreign Studies University, said her phone rang constantly after the announcement. Local readers expressed their appreciation for her work, and her introduction of Ernaux to China was hailed by her contemporaries and the press.
Commentators noted Guo has a deep insight into contemporary French literature, as she translated Poisson d’or in 2000, a book written by 2008 Nobel literature laureate Le Clezio. Guo said as a teacher of French, translation benefits her teaching.
Her appreciation of Ernaux comes from the author’s unique writing style in autofiction — a genre heavily influenced by the life experience of the author. “Ernaux wrote in ‘first person’ and exposed her experience through fiction… it seems like a paradox, but she has broken the wall,” she said.
Upon invitation by the French embassy in 2005, Guo met Ernaux in Beijing in a seminar focusing on her book. Ernaux admitted her mother was “still alive”, but in her books she wrote her mother “passed away”.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
