Published in 2017 (first published 2008)
256 pages
8 hours and 11 minutes
Annie Ernaux is a French writer. She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her book La Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, and her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her parents’ place of origin. She is the recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature.
What is this book about?
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 of 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 and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a 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. Although Ernaux had, for years, been hailed as a beloved best-selling 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.
