WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 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
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Seven Stories Press
ISBN-10
1609807871
ISBN-13
9781609807870
eBay Product ID (ePID)
237835142
Product Key Features
Book Title
Years
Author
Annie Ernaux
Format
Trade Paperback
Language
English
Topic
Women Authors, Europe / France, Personal Memoirs, Social History, Literary
Publication Year
2017
Genre
Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, History
Number of Pages
240 Pages
Dimensions
Item Length
8.1in
Item Height
0.8in
Item Width
5.6in
Item Weight
9.9 Oz
Additional Product Features
Lc Classification Number
Pq2665.R67z4613 2017
Reviews
"The process of reading The Years is similar to a treasure box discovery. ... It is the kind of book you close after reading a few pages, carried away by the bittersweet taste it leaves in your mind. ... Ernaux transforms her life into history and her memories into the collective memory of a generation." -- Los Angeles Review of Books