The Years (French Edition: Les Années by Annie Ernaux)

BookInfo

ISBN: 9781804270523	Number of Pages: 200
Publisher:  Fitzcarraldo Editions	Book Title: The Years
Publication Year: 2022	Target Audience: Trade
Author: Annie Ernaux	Reading Age: 18+

Summary

The Years won the “Duras Prize for Literature” in France after it published

The author of this book describes the growth of a person from childhood to old age for more than 60 years and the changes of the times with her creative writing style.

Like an old photo album, it awakens people’s collective memory, restores the true meaning of history, and reflects the passage of time and the evolution of the world.

This book is regarded as the author’s autobiography. In 1940, Anne Elnor was born into a poor family, and her account of World War II constituted her earliest childhood memories.

In the book, each stage of life will be opened through a photo or a video, followed by the hero’s experience, thoughts, and thoughts as an individual in this particular stage of life, as well as the major events of the French society and the whole world at that time.

After reading, we can see the changes in individuals and the world spanning more than 70 years.

The author uses a very innovative approach to integrate the personal experience at the micro level with the world change at the macro level.

She always starts from her personal feelings, does not focus on describing the actual impact of the changes in the macro world on individuals, nor tries to explain it, but focuses on showing how individuals, as ordinary people, consciously perceive and experience these changes.

About the Author

Annie Ernaux grew up in the working class. In 1960, she became a reciprocal student and studied in London, England. At the same time, she began to write her first novel. She studied at the University of Rouen and the University of Bordeaux in France.

In 1967, she became a middle school teacher. In 1974, she published her first novel, Les Armoires vides. 

In 1977, she worked at the French Distance Education Center. In 1983, she published the autobiographical novel The Possession and won the Le Nodo Literature Award the following year.

In 1987, she published the novel A Woman’s Story. In 1992, she published the novel Simple Passion. In 1997, she published the novel Shame. 

In 2000, she retired from the French Distance Education Center. In the same year, she published the novel La Vie extérieure.

In 2003, she published the novel Happening. In 2009, she published the novel The Years, which was rated as one of the “20 outstanding works of the year” by the French magazine “Reading“, and was awarded the Best Foreign Novel of the 21st Century 2009 by the People’s Literature Publishing House.

At 13:00 local time on October 6, 2022, in Stockholm, Sweden, the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022 to French writer Annie Ernaux. You can find more infomation in The Nobel Prize in Literature List.

The Years PDF version will come as soon as possible.

Table of Contents