Born in 1940,ANNIE ERNAUXgrew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen
University, and later taught high school. From 1977 to 2000, she
was a professor at theCentre National d'Enseignement par
Correspondance. Her books, in particularA Man's PlaceandA Woman's
Story, have become contemporary classics in France. Ernaux won the
prestigiousPrix RenaudotforA Man's Placewhen it was first published
in French in 1984, and the English edition became a New York Times
Notable Book.Other New York Times Notable Books includeSimple
PassionandA Woman's Story,which was also aLos Angeles TimesBook
Prize Finalist.
Ernaux's mostrecent work,The Years, has received the Fran
oise-Mauriac Prize of the French Academy, the Marguerite Duras
Prize, the Strega European Prize, the French Language Prize, and
the Telegramme Readers Prize. The English edition, translatedby
Alison L. Strayer, wonthe 31st Annual French-American Translation
Prize for non-fiction and the Warwick Prize for Women in
Translation and was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker
International Prize. Her new book,A Girl's Story,will be out from
Seven Stories in 2020.
ALISON STRAYER is a Canadian writer and translator. Her work has
won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and has been
shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Governor
General's Award for Literature and for Translation, the Grand Prix
du livre de Montreal, and the Prix litteraire France-Quebec. She
lives in Paris.
"Spanning decades, this is an outlier in Ernaux’s oeuvre; unlike
her other books, with their tight close-ups on moments in her life,
here such intimacies are embedded in the larger sweep of social
history. She moves between the chorus of conventional wisdom and
the specifics of her own experiences, showing how even an artist
with such a singular vision could recognize herself as a creature
of her cohort and her culture. Most moving to me is how she begins
and ends by listing images she can still recall — a merry-go-round
in the park; graffiti in a restroom — that have been inscribed into
her memory, yet are ultimately
ephemeral." —Jennifer Szalai. New York Times’s 100 Best
Books of the 21st Century
"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." —Edmund White, The New
York Times Book Review
"Annie Ernaux is ruthless. I mean that as a compliment. Perhaps no
other memoirist – if, in fact, memoir-writing is what Ernaux
is up to, which both is and isn’t the case – is so willing to
interrogate not only the details of her life but also the slippery
question of identity. ... Think of The Years ... as memoir in the
shape of intervention: 'all the things she has buried as shameful
and which are now worthy of retrieval, unfolding, in the light of
intelligence.'"
—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"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.” —Azarin Sadegh, Los
Angeles Review of Books
"Annie Ernaux’s The Years, translated by Alison L. Strayer, is
ostensibly the author’s autobiography, but if a book can be both
sinuous and fragmentary, this one is, circling around the truth,
presenting a collage of images, episodes, memories and flights of
imagination. The narrative voice moves between the first person
plural and the third person. It’s just a glorious novel – think JM
Coetzee meets Joan Didion." —Alex Preston, The Guardian
"... a memoir that is humble and generous, an homage to the great
French writers and thinkers of the previous century."
—Bookforum
"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." —Edouard Louis,
author of The End of Eddy
"One of the few indisputably great books of contemporary
literature." —Emmanuel Carrère, author of The Kingdom
"One of the best books you'll ever read." —Deborah Levy, author of
Hot Milk
"Attentive, communal and genuinely new, Annie Ernaux’s The Years is
an astonishing achievement." —Olivia Laing, author of Crudo
"A book of memory, of a life and world, staggeringly and
brilliantly original." —Philippe Sands, author of East West
Street
"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." —John Banville
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