ERNAUX, Annie, Happening (Fizcarraldo Editions, London), 2019

127x197mm; pp. 77, [3].

A very good copy indeed, with the faintest scuffing to the front cover; signed and dated (21 August 2019) to the half-title.

This is the first Fitzcarraldo edition of Tanya Leslie’s superb translation. Flat-signed and dated works by Ernaux are very scarce, especially for the English-language translations. Happening is Ernaux's best known and most shocking work, published as L'Événement by Gallimard in 2000, and often cited for its unflinching portrayal of a Ernaux's search for an abortion in 1960s France (a time when abortion was illegal).

Ernaux was the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, with the citation praising “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”. On the occasion of the Nobel, Emmanuel Macron wrote that “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of women's freedom, and the century's forgotten ones.”