The Possession

'The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city – the whole world – with a person you may never have met.' These words set the framework for  The Possession , a striking portrait of a woman after a love affair has ended. Annie Ernaux pulls the reader through every step of jealousy, of a woman's need to know who has replaced her in a lost beloved's life. Ernaux's writing, characteristically gorgeous in its precision, depicts the all too familiar human tendency to seek control and certainty after rejection.



Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular  A Man's Place  and  A Woman's Story , have become contemporary classics in France. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.