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The YearsStock informationGeneral Fields
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DescriptionFrom the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. Reviews'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.' 'One of the best books you will ever read.' '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.' 'Ravishing and almost oracular with insight, Ernaux's prose performs an extraordinary dance between collective and intimate, "big" history and private experience. The Years is a philosophical meditation paced as a rollercoaster ride through the decades. How we spend ourselves too quickly, how we reach for meaning but evade it, how to live, how to remember - these are Ernaux's themes. I am desperate for more.' 'I admire the form she invented, mixing autobiography, history, sociology. The anxious interrogations on her defection, moving as she did from the dominated to the dominant classes. Her loyalty to her people, her fidelity to herself. The progressive depersonalisation of her work, culminating in the disappearance of the "I" in The Years, a book I must have read three or four times since its publication, even more impressed each time by its precision, its sweep and - I can't think of any other word - its majesty. One of the few indisputably great books of contemporary literature.' 'The technique is like nothing I've ever seen before. She illuminates a person through the culture that poured through her; it's about time and being situated in a certain place in history and how time and place make a person. It's incredible.' 'I find her work extraordinary.'
Prizes: Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature 2022 (Sweden). Author Biography: Born in 1940, Annie Ernaux grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught at secondary school. From 1977 to 2000, she was a professor at the Centre National d'Enseignement par Correspondance. Her books, in particular A Man's Place and A Woman's Story, have become contemporary classics in France. In 2022, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. |