Annie Ernaux was born in 1940 in Lillebonne, a small town on the Seine, but grew up in Yvetot a rather insular, isolated market town, also in Normandy, which was badly damaged during the Second World War. Her early memories of Yvetot contained in her work eg Les Années/The Years are of a ruined town being reconstructed. They echo the images of a blasted post-war France so hauntingly evoked in Little Boy Lost.