Falling: Annie Ernaux's Most Intimate and Passionate Memoir!

The true story behind the film "Simple Passion"
Annie Ernaux's deepest exploration of desire, her greatest literary love affair



He bears my desires and my oblivion,
So clear, so real,
The passion in this relationship,
Undoubtedly, is the only truth.


I cannot sleep, cannot escape his body; even though he is gone, he still occupies my heart. This is my sorrow, I cannot forget another person, cannot become an independent individual, I am an empty, ornate phrase, summoned and dismissed at will, my very body dependent on another to survive.

I curled up in a ball under the sheets, imagining his body, his face, which had lain on this very bed yesterday. An overwhelming tenderness. He displayed an incredibly natural politeness and kindness (perhaps indifference); I saw him, felt he was different from before, and an elusive love emerged.

"Simple Passion" is Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux's most intimate writing, and a true reflection of women. With raw and unrestrained passion, delicate and penetrating prose, and the courage to face herself, she cries out the deepest voice of her soul: though knowing love is destined to be fruitless, why is she still willing to succumb? In writing that is at times joyful, at times sorrowful, the answer is already apparent...