The Story
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREHappening recounts what it was like to be a young woman whose life changed and world ominously narrowed in 1963 with an unwanted pregnancy. . . . It feels urgently of the moment.The New York TimesIn 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child.This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to selfadminister the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies.In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.Now an awardwinning film by Audrey DiwanWinner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film FestivalOfficial Selection of the Sundance Film Festival
Description
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATUREHappening recounts what it was like to be a young woman whose life changed and world ominously narrowed in 1963 with an unwanted pregnancy. . . . It feels urgently of the moment.The New York TimesIn 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child.This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to selfadminister the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies.In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.Now an awardwinning film by Audrey DiwanWinner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film FestivalOfficial Selection of the Sundance Film Festival
