The Years is a revolution, not only in the art of autobiography but in art itself. Annie Ernaux's book blends memories, dreams, facts and meditations into a unique evocation of the times in which we lived, and live.” Claude Piéplu leads a regiment of légionnaires, waving a flag in one hand and leading a goat with the other, in a Les Charlots film The author of one of the most important oeuvres in French literature, Annie Ernaux’s work is as powerful as it is devastating, as subtle as it is seething.’ And with their rise to power, a picture of Ernaux again appears — this time with a cat. The woman, who had been a lifelong journaler then decides to write a memoir which she thinks she wants to write in the third person (a lot like The Years). At the same time, Ernaux's children have grown and now visit her with their spouses, which makes her feel even older than she is.

Ernaux has repeatedly indicated her support for the BDS movement, a Palestinian-led campaign promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. [36] In 2018, the author signed a letter alongside about 80 other artists that opposed the holding of the Israel–France cross-cultural season by the Israeli and French governments. In 2019, Ernaux signed a letter calling on a French state-owned broadcasting network not to air the Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Israel that year. [37] In 2021, after the Operation Guardian of the Walls, she signed another letter that called Israel an apartheid state, claiming that "To frame this as a war between two equal sides is false and misleading. Israel is the colonizing power. Palestine is colonized." [36] Alison Fell, Ernaux: La Place and La Honte; Grant and Cutler, Critical Guides to French Studies, 2006. a b c "Annie Ernaux". Premio Strega (in Italian). Archived from the original on 6 October 2022 . Retrieved 7 October 2022.With The Years, Testard said Ernaux “invents a form, does something genuinely new with literature; it’s an intersection of the novel and autobiography and non-fiction”. The Years is an earnest, fearless book, a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism, for our period of absolute commodity fetishism.”

The willingness to take risks both in memory and writing, without seeking other people’s reassurance or approval, sets Ernaux apart from her peers. A Girl’s Story (first published in 2016, translated in 2020) was a narrative of the sexual abuse and trauma Ernaux suffered as a teenager from a male supervisor at a summer camp in Normandy in the 1950s and sparked debates about consent in France, before the watershed moment of #balancetonporc, or #MeToo. In contrast, The Young Man is a book about sexual empowerment, of coming into one’s own as a sexual subject and enjoying the maturity that brings. “Absolutely,” she replies, “and not at all about submission.” The Years covers six decades of social and personal history, from Ernaux’s working-class childhood in wartime and postwar Normandy – where she was born in 1940 – through the 1968 student uprisings, initial joy and later disillusionment during the long presidency of François Mitterand in the 1980s and 90s and on into the new millennium. It spans politics, literature, music, television, education, marriage, divorce, advertisements, popular slogans – all recounted through a narrator who never once uses the word “I’. Prix François Mauriac". aquitaine.fr (in French). 18 October 2014. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Testard said Ernaux’s “literary project has been to write about her life and to get at the truth of it somehow … I think she’s written about every important event in her life, from becoming aware of what social classes are as a child, to the death of her father and the death of her mother, to the illegal abortion she had in France in the 1960s, to her first sexual experiences and then to writing about love and passion and desire,” he said. “She’s been doing this for 50 years and there is a very genuine clarity to her work.”

The Years

Applauded as the finest work of fiction to appear about the Yugoslav Wars, acclaimed poet and novelist Ivana Bodrožić’s The Hotel Titois at its heart a story of a young girl’s coming of age, a reminder that even during times of war—especially during such times—the future rests with those who are the innocent victims and peaceful survivors.