Getting Lost — the collected journals from the affair that inspired freshly minted Nobel winner Annie Ernaux’s novel Simple Passion — was published in English for the first time this fall. Originally published in France, Passion Simple (the French title) was a runaway success, spending eight months atop the country’s best-seller list and spurring controversy for its alleged indecency. In 1993, when it was translated into English, American reviewers lauded Ernaux’s literary achievement while expressing incredulity both at its mass appeal and the puritanical response of a nation so averse to hand-wringing that it would safeguard the likes of Roman Polanski.
