Latest news with #AnnieErnaux
France 24
28-05-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Some 380 UK and Ireland writers denounce Gaza 'genocide'
The letter called on "our nations and the peoples of the world to join us in ending our collective silence and inaction in the face of horror," they wrote in a letter published on the Medium website. "The use of the words 'genocide' or 'acts of genocide' to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer debated by international legal experts or human rights organisations," the letter continued. Israel has repeatedly denied all accusations of genocide in its campaign to crush Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. The letter comes a day after 300 French-language writers, including Nobel Literature prize winners Annie Ernaux and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, signed a similar statement condemning "genocide". "Palestinians are not the abstract victims of an abstract war. Too often, words have been used to justify the unjustifiable, deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible," the British and Irish writers said. The writers, including novelist Elif Shafak and playwright Hanif Kureishi as well as the Scottish and Welsh writers PEN clubs, called for a ceasefire, the "immediate distribution of food and medical aid" in Gaza and sanctions on Israel. International condemnation has grown over Israel's humanitarian aid blockade and relentless strikes after it ended a ceasefire in March and intensified military operations this month. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 53,977, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel's offensive since October 2023, when a Hamas attack on Israel triggered the war. Some 1,218 were killed in the Hamas attack, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead. "This is not only about our common humanity and all human rights; this is about our moral fitness as the writers of our time," the writers said. On Monday over 800 UK-based legal experts, including former Supreme Court justices, wrote to Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying: "Genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza or, at a minimum, there is a serious risk of genocide occurring. "Serious violations of international law are being committed and are further threatened by Israel," the lawyers said, adding the UK is "legally obliged to take all reasonable steps within their power to prevent and punish genocide." © 2025 AFP
Middle East Eye
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Leading French authors ask for Israel's war on Gaza to be called 'genocide'
The French newspaper Liberation published an op-ed on Monday signed by 300 French-speaking authors, which called for "naming the 'genocide'" committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. The signatories of the text, which included two Nobel Prize winners for literature, Annie Ernaux and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, denounced "the repeated public statements of leading figures such as Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir," who "openly express genocidal intentions". "The term 'genocide' is not a slogan. It carries legal, political and moral responsibilities. We can no longer simply call it 'horror' or show general and pointless empathy without qualifying this horror or specifying what it is," they argue. "Just as it was urgent to qualify the crimes committed against civilians on 7 October 2023 as war crimes and crimes against humanity, today we must call it 'genocide'." The op-ed, signed by Goncourt Prize winners Leila Slimani and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, also calls for "sanctions against the State of Israel", "an immediate ceasefire" and "the release of Israeli hostages" along with "the thousands of Palestinian prisoners arbitrarily detained in Israeli jails". New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Citing the killing of Palestinian poet and novelist Heba Abu Nada by Israeli bombings on 20 October 2023, the signatories pay tribute to the Palestinians killed "relentlessly" by Israel, "by the dozens, every day" and among them their "brothers and sisters: the writers of Gaza". "When Israel doesn't kill them, it maims them, displaces them and deliberately starves them. Israel has destroyed the places of writing and reading - libraries, universities, homes, parks." 'No longer a matter of debate' The authors point out that "the term 'genocide' to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer a matter of debate for many international lawyers and human rights organisations". Accusations of "genocide" against Israel have multiplied recently, coming from the UN, prominent human rights groups, a growing number of countries and international law experts. Earlier this month, an investigation by Dutch newspaper NRC showed that a growing number of the world's leading genocide scholars believe that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Top genocide scholars unanimous that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: Dutch investigation Read More » The paper interviewed seven renowned genocide and Holocaust researchers from six countries - including Israel - all of whom described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocidal. Many said their peers in the field share this assessment. On Sunday, Elie Barnavi, former Israeli ambassador to France and a historian, told TV5 Monde that while he had long been reluctant to use the term genocide for "legal and historical" reasons, he had to admit that "there are genocidal people in the Israeli government". "They proclaim it themselves: 'We want to kill everyone, we want to destroy everything,'" he said, adding that these statements clearly reflect genocidal rhetoric. On Monday, the leader of the French Socialist Party Olivier Faure also denounced for the first time Israel's war on Gaza as a 'genocide'. "Benjamin Netanyahu's government is committing genocide," he told hundreds of supporters gathered in Paris, saying he now embraced the term "loud and clear". "Genocide is characterised as soon as there is intentionality. Members of the Israeli government are making numerous statements to this effect [...] This policy is unfortunately thought out, planned, and even claimed," Faure added. "Better late than never," replied Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of France Unbowed (LFI), a left-wing party that has been using the word genocide to describe the situation in Gaza for a long time. Public approve sanctions If the French government itself has refrained from adopting the term - unlike European countries such as Spain and Ireland, which have joined South Africa's lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice - it has showed a much more critical stance towards Israel in recent weeks. On 13 May, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of "unacceptable" behaviour in blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, raising the possibility of sanctions. French teacher suspended over minute's silence tribute to Palestinians in Gaza Read More » And last week, the French government joined Canada and the UK in condemning Israel's "egregious actions" in Gaza and warned of joint action if it did not halt its current military offensive. The threats of sanctions are widely supported by French public opinion, according to a poll published on Tuesday that reported that 74 percent of respondents were in favour. While 75 percent of respondents support halting arms deliveries to Israel, 62 percent deem necessary the suspension of the trade association agreement between the European Union and Israel, and 58 percent see an embargo on Israeli products as a good solution. In addition to sanctions, Macron could announce France's recognition of the Palestinian state at the UN during a trip to New York in June. The measure is supported by almost two-thirds of those surveyed (63 percent), particularly on the left. On the right and far right, support is weaker, with only 41 percent of far-right National Rally supporters in favour.
Spectator
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Murderous impulses: The Possession, by Annie Ernaux, reviewed
'The first thing I did after waking up was grab his cock – stiff with sleep – and hold still, as if hanging on to a branch.' The opening of Annie Ernaux's essay might suggest that the 'possession' of the title is of a husband's penis. But after our nameless protagonist leaves 'W', her husband of 18 years, it is with his new woman that she becomes obsessed – possessed with a 'primordial savagery'. She is maraboutée, or bewitched. Ernaux writes not in the heat of desire but in retrospect. The translation by Anna Moschovakis is chicly austere. Like concrete poetry, small paragraphs sit adrift on the page; the text is as unmoored as our protagonist. Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022, and her hybrid memoir The Years has been adapted into a staggeringly powerful stage production. The Possession is a microcosmic analysis of jealousy and agony. Our heroine becomes an 'echo chamber for all pain everywhere'. She goes on a 'tortuous and relentless search' through the internet to find the lover and fantasises about committing 'crimes of passion', reflecting that one is more likely to cave into murderous impulses in the evening, much like scoffing chocolate. For the French, the only thing worse than murder is getting fat. What makes her possession possible is the ex-husband. The couple 'maintain a painful bond' as W drip-feeds her information about the 'new woman'. His reasons are especially murky when he gives her a birthday present of a bra and g-string. While she dances on the edge of insanity, she revels in the pain of feeling alive.
Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Annie Ernaux and the bourgeosie's ‘extraordinary erotic capabilities'
'I have always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published,' Annie Ernaux once admitted. 'To write as if I were about to die.' If by that she meant writing with brazen candour, she has succeeded. The most intimate human experiences — grief, greed, fear, sickness and lust, along with other kinds of private 'primordial savagery' — are laid bare throughout the prolific French author's works, sometimes in shudderingly explicit detail, and The Possession is no exception. It is the latest in a series of reprints of her books from the independent publisher Fitzcarraldo. The deadly sin that this particular memoir focuses on is envy, with Ernaux reluctantly handing over an ex-boyfriend to an anonymous new woman. 'The strangest
New Statesman
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The cinema of abortion
In her memoir Happening, Annie Ernaux describes abortion as a 'thing that had no place in language'. The French writer had an illegal abortion in 1963, an experience she recounts in brutal, clear-eyed detail. Her descriptions of the procedure are striking for their directness, but also their rarity. I thought about this while watching April, the stark and beautiful film from Georgian film-maker Dea Kulumbegashvili, co-produced by Luca Guadagnino. It follows Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), an obstetrician who performs secret abortions, and finds herself under investigation after a stillborn delivery in the hospital where she works. In front of a panel of three men, she explains that the mother hadn't registered the pregnancy. 'Murderer!' snarls the baby's father, spitting at her from across the table, adding that he knows she performs abortions in the villages. On-screen portrayals of abortionists are few and far between. Claude Chabrol's Story of Women stars Isabelle Huppert as a version of the abortionist Marie-Louise Giraud, a flawed, pragmatic character whose actions saw her receive the guillotine in France in 1943. In Mike Leigh's Vera Drake, set in London circa 1950, when abortion was still a crime in Britain, Imelda Staunton's backstreet abortionist is motivated by kindness. The abortionist encountered by the pregnant protagonist in Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, on the other hand, is a nightmarish sexual predator. More recently women-authored abortion scenes have offered different, more hopeful portrayals. In Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the abortionist is a female healer whose own small children are present on the bed during the procedure. It is not presented as painless but neither is it framed as a traumatic or unsavoury event. Similarly, in Eliza Hittman's coolly restrained pro-choice drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always, the access hurdles faced by the 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) are much scarier than the abortion itself, which is administered by a group of supportive female doctors. In Georgia, abortions are legal for pregnancies up to 12 weeks but so frowned upon that many doctors refuse to perform them. April, which won the Special Jury Prize at last year's Venice Film Festival, is about a woman who is driven by an inner sense of justice, and, perhaps more interestingly, an inescapable feeling of despair. Nina spends her nights having anonymous sex with strangers and driving out to villages via seemingly endless roads. Her bleak destinations feel ironic against the grandeur and beauty of the countryside. Cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan, who also shot Guadagnino's cannibal road-trip movie Bones and All, captures confronting violet and navy blue skies, heavy (or perhaps even pregnant) with melancholy. Ernaux is right that there is an absence of language, written or visual, to describe the act of terminating a pregnancy by choice. Kulumbegashvili begins to create a vocabulary by first depicting a birth. Early on in April, a bird's-eye-view shot shows a baby being born in unflinching, clinical detail. We don't see the mother's face, just her body. Kulumbegashvili spent a year and a half embedded in a real maternity ward in Georgia, where she filmed several real births. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe It's a serious approach that declines to show the audience the mother's catharsis, a challenge to the idea that birth is always joy, and abortion always terror. The film immediately sets up the idea that abortion is not a moral issue, but an aspect of women's health. In one scene, Nina gives a married 16-year-old a plastic bag containing the pill. Kulumbegashvili wants us to bear witness to this act, too. A recent theatre adaptation of Ernaux's The Years stages a version of the abortion scene from Happening. It is impressionistic rather than graphic, and yet the monologue that accompanies the scene is visceral. Nearly every performance of the play has been interrupted due to an audience member fainting. April builds to a climactic set-piece in which Nina performs an abortion. It couldn't really be called gory, but still, it's an agonising watch. A non-verbal teenage girl whose pregnancy is the product of family abuse lies on her back on the kitchen table that has been covered in a sheet of plastic. The shot is stationary, the camera by her side, unflinching. All we see are the girl's squirming abdomen, her raised knees, and her mother's reassuring hands. By refusing to break the shot, Kulumbegashvili dares us not to look away. 'April' is in cinemas now [See also: Joan Didion without her style] Related
