France flag Autobiography books from France

Recommended autobiography books (5)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. If you are into autobiography here are some autobiography books from France for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.

1.

Happening by Annie Ernaux EN

Rating: 5 (9 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
Translated from the French by Tanya Leslie 'Absolutely extraordinary' - Liberation In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and single, realises she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague. Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep her child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. Abortion was illegal at the time and she attempted, in vain, to self-administer with a knitting needle and nearly died. An exceptionally moving account of a tragic experience.

2.

In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
The first installment of the French author's multivolume autobiographical novel, originally published in 1913, in which he recalls his childhood and first infatuation.


4.

Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
The shattering novel of underground life the New York Times called “a cry of rapture and horror . . . the purest lyrical genius.” Jean Genet’s debut novel Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be his masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell. A semi- autobiographical account of one man’s journey through the Paris demi-monde, dubbed “the epic of masturbation” by no less a figure than Jean-Paul Sartre, the novel’s exceptional value lies in its exquisite ambiguity.

5.

The Years by Annie Ernaux EN

Rating: 4 (8 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE Shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008 The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and n... continue