The most awaited panel at Flip ( Paraty's Literary Festival) this year lived up to the expectations of the horde of Annie Ernaux's admirers who crowded the Matriz auditorium and the main square in the historical downtown in Paraty this Saturday.
The writer's panel ended in a wave of applause and tears when she answered a question about the French right-wing party's negative reaction to her winning the Nobel Prize in October.
"These are people who don't see what I write and the way I write as legitimate. For my part, it's good to be the first French woman to win this award — and with writing that can be a source of freedom."
The libertarian aspect of Ernaux's literature was the focal point of the discussion she had with the Brazilian writer Veronica Stigger, mediated by the critic Rita Palmeira.
The other moment that most enraptured the audience —to the point that the roars and applause in the square were audible from inside the auditorium— was when she discussed the way she expresses her desire in her novel "Happening", which reports the illegal abortion she had when she was a college student, and also in her novel "Simple Passion", about falling in love with a man 30 years younger than her.
"It's not fair to link abortion to a matter of desire. I just wanted to have a free life," she said.
Translated by Cassy Dias