The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that French novelist Annie Ernaux has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory,"

Her first published piece, "Les Amoires vides" demonstrates that she is primarily an autobiographical author (Cleaned Out).

In announcing the award, the academy emphasized the "universal consequence of her work that can reach everyone."

Mats Malm, secretary of the academy, stated that he was unable to reach Ernaux by phone before making the announcement.

The French novelist, who writes nonfiction as well as novels about everyday life, was selected from a list of 233 contenders whose names are kept confidential. Last year, she was the bookies' favorite to win the award.

Reviewing "Se perdre" (Getting Lost) for Britain's Guardian newspaper last month, the critic stated that the novel will "become a kind of totem for lovers: a manual to help them find their centre when, like Ernaux, they are lost in love."

In the opinion of the academy, last year's prize went to the relatively unknown Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,"

Louise Glück, who served as United States Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004, was awarded the 2020 prize.