The Years
The Years by Annie Ernaux is a personal narrative that spans from 1941 to 2006, offering a unique exploration of memory and collective experience. Published by Seven Stories Press on November 21, 2017, this edition contains 240 pages and is presented in English. Ernaux employs a blend of personal reflections, cultural references, and historical context to illustrate the passage of time, creating a narrative that intertwines the intimate with the collective.
Readers will find that Ernaux’s work transcends traditional autobiography, as it captures the essence of generations through a shared voice. The narrative incorporates elements such as local dialect, advertising, and media, reflecting the societal changes over decades. By using impersonal pronouns, Ernaux emphasizes the interconnectedness of personal and collective histories, making the experience of time both palpable and profound. This edition invites readers to engage with the complexities of social history and personal memoir, revealing how individual lives are shaped by broader cultural forces.
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WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize
Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008
The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries.
Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author’s continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.
On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir “written” by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the “I” for the “we” (or “they”, or “one”) as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents’ generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents’ generation (and could be writing of her own book): “From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the “we” and impersonal pronouns.”
Co-winner of the 2018 French-American Foundation Translation Prize in Nonfiction
Winner of the 2017 Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her entire body of work
Winner of the 2016 Strega European Prize
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