SOURCE: An afterword to Cleaned Out by Annie Ernaux, translated by Carol Sanders, Dalkey Archive Press, 1990, pp. 124-27.

In the following excerpt, which was taken from the translator's afterword to the English-language version of Les armoires vides, Sanders provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Cleaned Out, briefly examining Ernaux's aims and discussing the volume's themes, style, and place within the context of her other works.

"The plan to write Les Armoires vides matured in me for five years," Annie Ernaux recently wrote me concerning Cleaned Out, "until I became certain of one thing: the book would be a quest, as well as an explanation of the social and cultural divide that I had experienced. Born of working-class parents who became small shopkeepers, I had gradually changed in my tastes, my habits, my interests, and my whole outlook on the world, as a result of an education which...