Author | Annie Ernaux |
---|---|
Original title | Les Années |
Translator | Alison L. Strayer |
Language | French |
Genre | Memoir |
Publisher | Éditions Gallimard |
Publication date | 7 February 2008 |
Publication place | France |
Published in English | 2017 |
Media type | |
Pages | 256 |
ISBN | 978-2-07-077922-2 |
OCLC | 192081505 |
843/.914 B | |
LC Class | PQ2665.R67 Z46 2008 |
The Years ( French: Les Années) is a 2008 non-fiction book by Annie Ernaux. It has been described as a "hybrid" memoir, spanning the period of 1941 to 2006. [1] [2] [3] Ernaux's English publisher, Seven Stories Press, described it as an autobiography that is "at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective." [3]
In the book, Ernaux writes about herself in the third person (elle, or "she" in English) for the first time, providing a vivid look at French society just after the Second World War until the early 2000s. [4] It is the moving social story of a woman and of the evolving society she lived in. With this feature of book, Edmund White described it as a "collective autobiography", in his review for The New York Times. [3]
The Years was very well received by French critics and is considered by many to be her magnum opus. [5]
It won the 2008 Françoise-Mauriac Prize of the Académie française, the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize, [6] the 2008 French Language Prize, the 2009 Télégramme Readers Prize, and the 2016 Premio Strega Europeo Prize.[ citation needed] Translated by Alison L. Strayer, The Years won the 31st Annual French-American Foundation Translation Prize in the non-fiction category. [7]
Alison L. Strayer's English translation was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. [8]