Shame

"My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon." So begins this haunting, painfully honest narrative, the true story of a single event that has resonated throughout the author's life. The outburst ended almost as quickly as it began, and her parents quickly resumed their normal routine. But the image of her father with one hand at her mother's neck and the other holding a hatchet cuts into Ernaux as surely as if she had been the victim. Though Shame begins as the story of a frightened 12-year-old girl, it completes the picture of her family that began with A Woman's Story and A Man's Place.

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.