I Will Write to Avenge My People The Nobel Lecture McGUIRE Richard * Social Responsibility

* Social Responsibility

So Circe sets forth her tale

the more distant she feels

During the weeks leading up to Christmas

from overhearing her grandmothers' peculiar stories to nurturing her own personal freedom and a boundless love of literature

I Will Write to Avenge My People The Nobel Lecture McGUIRE Richard * Social Responsibility'I will write to avenge my people.' It was as a young woman that Annie Ernaux first wrote these words in her diary, giving a name to her purpose in life as a writer. She returns to them in her stirring defence of literature and of political writing in her Nobel Lecture, delivered in Stockholm on 7 December 2022. To write of her own life, she asserts, is to 'shatter the loneliness of experiences endured and repressed'; to mine individual experience is