Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Frozen Woman | 1981 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 2 | A Man’s Place | 1983 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 3 | A Woman’s Story | 1987 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 4 | Simple Passion | 1991 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 5 | Positions | 1991 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 6 | Exteriors | 1993 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 7 | Passion Perfect | 1993 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 8 | I Remain in Darkness | 1996 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 9 | Shame | 1997 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 10 | Happening | 2000 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 11 | The Years | 2008 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 12 | Things Seen | 2010 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 13 | A Girl’s Story | 2020 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 14 | Getting Lost | 2022 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 15 | Look at the Lights, My Love | 2023 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 16 | The Young Man | 2023 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 17 | I Will Write to Avenge My People | 2023 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
| 18 | The Use of Photography | 2024 | Annie Ernaux | Buy |
Annie Ernaux’s non-fiction makes up the bulk of her published work and spans her entire career from the 1980s to the present. Her books are short, stripped-down accounts of her own life and the lives of those around her. A Man’s Place (1983) is about her father, A Woman’s Story (1987) about her mother, and both books use spare prose to capture working-class French life.
The Years (2008) is her most ambitious work, tracing French society from the 1940s to the 2000s through a mix of personal memory and cultural observation. Later books like Happening, Shame, and Getting Lost each focus on a single experience or period. Her Nobel lecture, I Will Write to Avenge My People (2023), summarizes the purpose behind her life’s work. The collection spans 18 titles published over more than four decades.