Nathalie Sarraute

Who was Nathalie Sarraute?

Nathalie Sarraute (French: [natali saʁot]; born Natalia Ilinichna Tcherniak (Russian: Ната́лья Ильи́нична Черня́к); 18 July [O.S. 5 July] 1900 – 19 October 1999) was a French writer and lawyer. Sarraute was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk (now Ivanovo), 300 km north-east of Moscow. She was the daughter of Pauline (née Chatounovsky), a writer, and Ilya Tcherniak, a chemist. Following the divorce of her parents, she spent her childhood shuttled between France and Russia. In 1909 she moved to Paris with her father. Sarraute studied law and literature at the prestigious Sorbonne, having a particular fondness for contemporary literature and the works of Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, who greatly affected her conception of the novel, then later studied history at the University of Oxford and sociology in Berlin, before passing the French bar exam (1926–1941) and becoming a lawyer.

In 1925, she married Raymond Sarraute, a fellow lawyer, with whom she had three daughters. Nathalie Sarraute was a French writer and lawyer.

Historical significance

She was nominated in 1969 for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Nobel Committee member Lars Gyllensten.