Happening Annie Ernaux Tanya Leslie Translation by Annie Ernaux, Tanya Leslie (translation) 9781609809485, 1609809483 instant download after payment.

In 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.

"Happening 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 Times 

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 self-administer 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, Annie Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.

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Annie Ernaux is a French writer.  She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father & her experiences growing up in a small town in France, & her subsequent process of moving into adulthood & away from her parents' place of origin.