Lauded for her spare prose, Ernaux here removes all artifice, her writing pared down to its most naked and vulnerable. When he is gone and the desire has faded, she feels that she is a step closer to death. Getting Lost is the diary kept by Annie Ernaux during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a haunting record of a woman in the grips of love, desire and despair. Her lover escapes the city to see her there and Ernaux seems to survive only in expectation of these encounters, saying “his desire for me is the only thing I can be sure of.” She cannot write, she trudges distractedly through her various other commitments in the world, she awaits his next call she lives only to feel desire and for the next rendezvous.

In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living outside of Paris and nearing fifty. Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Caf. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate, unfiltered. Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L Strayer, Fitzcarraldo Editions 12.99, 224 pages. Getting Lost is the diary Annie Ernaux kept during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, a Russian diplomat. The diary of one of France’s most important, award-winning writers during the year she had a passionate and secret love affair with a Russian diplomat

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 'Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.' Annie Ernaux, Happening.

Getting lost annie ernaux