Edited by Fort, this compendium of writings by and about Nobel Prize winner Ernaux combines what Ernaux calls “autosociobiography,” with thoughtful responses to her work by academics, translators, directors, actors, and critics. Previously unpublished journal entries reveal her reflections on writing and family, success, and fear of failure. “After each success,” she admits feeling “overcome by deep disgust, exhausted to the point of tears.” Love, sex, and death recur as themes: She calls her mother’s death “the first great sorrow of my life.” Confronting her own mortality when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she writes that death “has always been present in my life, the bombings, tetanus when I was five, finding out about my sister’s death, the moles removed when I was sixteen, during the summer, that I thought were cancerous, two bloody holes, dark around the edges, on these breasts now under threat.” Several pieces, including a few interviews, consider particular books or the development of her craft. Writing, for her, “is a slow searching, a desire to grasp and understand reality, and also to bear witness.” Travel is one way to bear witness, and her travel journals show her to be an acerbic cultural critic. America’s “ideology in all its violence and falseness…is the mirror image of the USSR.” In Romania, she feels despondent, surrounded by American consumerism—Coca-Cola and Marlboro ads. Although growing up she longed to travel, in Korea, she admits “exoticism wears me out.” Ernaux’s varied pieces serve as ample evidence of her power as a writer: “I want my words to be like stains, mute and heavy, that we can never manage to tear ourselves away from.” Illustrated with photographs and drawings.