Born in 1940, ANNIE ERNAUX grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and began teaching high school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man's Place and A Woman's Story, have become contemporary classics in France. She won the prestigious Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place when it was first published in French in 1984. The English edition was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The English edition of A Woman's Story was a New York Times Notable Book.
Exteriors is honest, genuine and skillfully executed. -Columbus Dispatch Ernaux's writings walk a tightrope between art and confession, immersing us in a territory bounded on one side by commitment and on the other by desire. -Newsday Journal du dehors (Exteriors) is the opposite of an intimate diary. It shows a woman observing, without scorn or pity, the world out of which she came . . . . It is the text of a writer for whom the tex is, simultaneously, interiority and provocation. -Telerama