In Annie Ernaux’s Nobel prize we see the public value of our intimate histories | Gaby Wood

This year’s winner shows the merit of the memoir form and marks a turning point for the literature prize

The Nobel prize in literature has, for the past 121 years, traditionally been awarded to novelists, playwrights and poets. There have been one or two philosophers (Bertrand Russell, Elias Canetti) and very occasionally it has been given to writers of non-fiction with an epic sweep – Winston Churchill won in 1953, for instance, thanks to his “mastery of historical and biographical description”.

This year marks a turning point: in awarding the Nobel to the 82-year-old French writer Annie Ernaux, the Swedish Academy has, for the first time, seen merit in a memoirist and announced to the world the public value of private life.

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