The Years

Autobiography is given a new form, at once subjective & impersonal, private & collective, in Annie Ermaux’s genre-bending masterpiece.  

Translated by Alison L Strayer.

The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past & present, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising, & news headlines. Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands & names for ever-proliferating objects are given voice. The author’s voice continually dissolves & re-emerges as Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity.

Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling & award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir "written" by entire generations, & a story of generations telling a very personal story.

"The Years is an earnest, fearless book, a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination & consumerism, for our period of absolute commodity fetishism."  — Edmund White, The New York Times Book Review

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Annie Ernaux is a French writer.  She won the Prix Renaudot in 1984 for her bookLa Place, an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, & her subsequent process of moving into adulthood & away from her parents' place of origin.