The Possession

Synopsis

‘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.

Author

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. In 2017, Annie Ernaux was awarded the Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her life’s work. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Anna Moschovakis is a poet, novelist and translator. She is the author of the novels An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, Participation and Eleanor, or, The Rejection of the Progress of Love. Her translation of David Diop’s novel At Night All Blood Is Black won the 2021 International Booker Prize. She has also translated Albert Cossery’s The Jokers, Bresson on Bresson, and (with Christine Schwartz-Harley) Marcelle Sauvaget’s Commentary.