When the French author Annie Ernaux embarked on a secret love affair with a younger man, a married Russian diplomat, it provided the fodder for her 1991 autofiction novella Simple Passion. She later released Getting Lost, a collection of her captivating diary entries about the passionate relationship. This year, Ernaux, who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, published the book in English with translation by Alison L. Strayer. Though it’s filled with recollections of steamy encounters with her lover, the most arresting are the moments of vulnerability that Ernaux shares of herself—her anxieties, her obsessions, and her loneliness. —Cady Lang
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