The works of Annie Ernaux (b. 1940, Prix Renaudot 1983) have been a source of ongoing controversy. Their central concern is the autobiographically inspired motif of self-improvement via education. This study is the first to essay a comprehensive appreciation extending from analyses of individual works to a synoptic overview revealing the multi-faceted quality of the oeuvre as a whole. The works themselves display a number of highly remarkable characteristics, notably the unusual degree to which content is mirrored by form. The social criticism implicit in the description of social improvement as a radically stigmatic experience denying the upwardly mobile individual any kind of self-affirming identity is echoed at the textual level by a diatribe against a bourgeois ideal of literature which by virtue of its smoothly coherent surface features is bound to play down the searing conflicts experienced by an individual moving up to higher social status.