French author Annie Ernaux, known for her deceptively simple novels drawing on personal experience of class and gender, won the Nobel Prize in Literature today (Thursday).

Ernaux, 82, was honoured "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory".

Ernaux is the 17th woman to win the prestigious prize, out of 119 literature laureates since the first Nobel was awarded in 1901.