French author Annie Ernaux won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday for “the courage and clinical acuity” in her largely autobiographical books examining personal memory and social inequality.

In explaining its choice, the Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, “consistently and from different angles examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class”.

Ernaux, the first French woman to win the literature prize, said winning the award was “immense”.

She has previously said that writing is a political act, opening our eyes to social inequality. “And for this purpose she uses language as ‘a knife’, as she calls it, to tear apart the veils of imagination,” the academy said.

Her debut novel was “Les Armoires Vides” in 1974 but she gained international recognition following the publication of “Les Années” in 2008, translated into English as “The Years” in 2017.