Stockholm, Sweden - French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory," the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.

A writer who focuses largely on autobiographical works, Annie Ernaux's first published work was Les Amoires vides (Cleaned Out).

In announcing the award, the academy noted the "universal consequence of her work that can reach everyone."

Academy secretary Mats Malm said he had not been able to reach Ernaux by phone before making the announcement.

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The French author, who writes non-fiction as well as novels turning on everyday life, was chosen from a secret list of 233 candidates. She was the bookmakers' favorite to take the prize last year.

Reviewing Ernaux's Se perdre (Getting Lost) for The New York Times, book critic Dwight Garner called it "one of those books about loneliness that, on every page, makes you feel less alone."

Last year the prize went to the relatively unknown Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah "for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents," in the words of the academy.

Louise Glück, who was US Poet Laureate in 2003 to 2004, received the 2020 prize.