The Other Girl by Annie Ernaux
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₱955.00
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
Annie Ernaux’s profound investigation into the life of her mysterious older sister, who died at six, two years before Annie was born.
Annie Ernaux’s profound investigation into the life of her mysterious older sister, who died at six, two years before Annie was born.
In the summer of 1950, when Annie Ernaux is ten, she inadvertently learns she had a sister who died at six, two years before her own birth. Having believed she was an only child, she learns that she has replaced another daughter—“the little saint,” “the absent one in every conversation,” who lives on in Annie’s parents’ wordless grief.
Taking the form of a letter to the unknown sister, The Other Girl was published in French in 2011 as part of the Affranchis collection (published by les éditions du Nil), which invited writers to compose “the letter they’d never written,” inspired by Kafka’s Letter to His Father. “I had to come to terms with this mysterious inconsistency: you, the good girl, were not saved, but I, the demon, survived. More than survived, was miraculously saved. So you had to die at six for me to come into the world and be saved.”
The Other Girl by the 2022 Nobel Laureate appears now for the first time in an English language version, adding a necessary and wondrous piece to the great and ongoing puzzle that is the oeuvre of one of our greatest living writers, Annie Ernaux.
REVIEWS
*"In this gently heartbreaking account, Nobel Prize winner Ernaux (The Use of Photography) reflects on the death of her older sister, Ginette, in 1938, two years before the author was born. Months before the diphtheria vaccine was made compulsory in France, six-year-old Ginette died of the disease. Taking inspiration from Franz Kafka’s Letter to His Father, Ernaux addresses her late sibling directly, compiling all she knows of Ginette’s life, death, and legacy into a diaristic dossier. Though Ernaux’s parents never spoke of Ginette, the author tracks down and interviews the few living people who remember the girl’s death, seeking to map the devastation it wrought on her family before Ernaux was born. —Publishers Weekly
"Originally published as part of a French series inviting authors to compose 'the letter they'd never written'—after Franz Kafka's letter to his late father…. Ernaux is 10 when she overhears her mother talking about another daughter, one who died at 6 of diphtheria…. No matter how slim, though, Ernaux's books are not chapters, but volumes; bundling them as a single story ignores the texture of recurrence…. One pivotal, painful memory at a time, Ernaux evaluates her life. A central question: Why would she, a country girl with grandparents who never learned to read, choose to write? In book after book, there is another stab at an answer…. The book's ghostly subject and epistolary form provide Ernaux with yet another origin story…. Economically and poetically, Ernaux traces not only the discovery of this bizarre secret, but the ways in which knowing and not speaking it (never once, to either of her parents) has impacted her, universalizing the emotion of something incredibly specific." —Natasha Stagg, New York Times Book Review
PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 978-1644214879
Pages: 96
Taking the form of a letter to the unknown sister, The Other Girl was published in French in 2011 as part of the Affranchis collection (published by les éditions du Nil), which invited writers to compose “the letter they’d never written,” inspired by Kafka’s Letter to His Father. “I had to come to terms with this mysterious inconsistency: you, the good girl, were not saved, but I, the demon, survived. More than survived, was miraculously saved. So you had to die at six for me to come into the world and be saved.”
The Other Girl by the 2022 Nobel Laureate appears now for the first time in an English language version, adding a necessary and wondrous piece to the great and ongoing puzzle that is the oeuvre of one of our greatest living writers, Annie Ernaux.
REVIEWS
*"In this gently heartbreaking account, Nobel Prize winner Ernaux (The Use of Photography) reflects on the death of her older sister, Ginette, in 1938, two years before the author was born. Months before the diphtheria vaccine was made compulsory in France, six-year-old Ginette died of the disease. Taking inspiration from Franz Kafka’s Letter to His Father, Ernaux addresses her late sibling directly, compiling all she knows of Ginette’s life, death, and legacy into a diaristic dossier. Though Ernaux’s parents never spoke of Ginette, the author tracks down and interviews the few living people who remember the girl’s death, seeking to map the devastation it wrought on her family before Ernaux was born. —Publishers Weekly
"Originally published as part of a French series inviting authors to compose 'the letter they'd never written'—after Franz Kafka's letter to his late father…. Ernaux is 10 when she overhears her mother talking about another daughter, one who died at 6 of diphtheria…. No matter how slim, though, Ernaux's books are not chapters, but volumes; bundling them as a single story ignores the texture of recurrence…. One pivotal, painful memory at a time, Ernaux evaluates her life. A central question: Why would she, a country girl with grandparents who never learned to read, choose to write? In book after book, there is another stab at an answer…. The book's ghostly subject and epistolary form provide Ernaux with yet another origin story…. Economically and poetically, Ernaux traces not only the discovery of this bizarre secret, but the ways in which knowing and not speaking it (never once, to either of her parents) has impacted her, universalizing the emotion of something incredibly specific." —Natasha Stagg, New York Times Book Review
PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 978-1644214879
Pages: 96