Translate This! Episode 2

A Man's Place by Annie Ernaux

Jinwoo Park and I have started a dedicated Substack site for our ongoing exploration of world literature. Over there you’ll find Episode 2 of Translate This! We discuss A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux, originally published in French in 1983, subsequently translated into English by Tanya Leslie. If you’re enjoying these conversations, I cordially invite you to SIGN UP at the Translate This! site to make sure you receive all our posts.

I have made the difficult decision to concede to full colour for Translate This, but remain determined to keep all feature imagery in black and white here at the Substack Octopus. And so I have found the photo above, which is of the centre of Yvetot in Normandy in France, taken in 1941, after considerable damage perpertrated by the invading German military forces. Although Yvetot is never mentioned by name in A Man’s Place, we can be 100% certain that this is the town in which most of the novel takes place, because this is where Ernaux grew up and where her parents ran a grocery store/cafe. Ernaux’s father, the novel’s central subject, did not serve in World War II (too old), nor in World War I (too young), and yet the vicissitudes of war marked his life.

“A Man's Place is among the most subtle, compressed, engrossing, delicate, understated and thoughtful books ever written about family, about class, about growing up and leaving home,” writes Francine Prose in her introduction to the novel. “We feel Ernaux has written a letter to inform us, her readers, about the latest news: the news about what it means to be born and to die, to be a child and a parent, haunted forever by ‘fractured love’ for those we love, and who love us most.”

Check out our conversation about the book and feel free to share your thoughts with us.