Annie Ernaux - Os Anos

Spanning from 1941 to 2006, *The Years* tells a story that is simultaneously collective and personal, transversal and intimate, of sixty years in the life of a country and the life of a woman.

Through small narrative fragments, through the relationship between photographs, songs, films, objects, or events of recent history, more than a disconcerting autobiography, Annie Ernaux constructs a recollection of a "we," in an account of what remains when time passes: "Everything will be erased in a second [...] Neither I nor myself. Language will continue to put the world into words. In conversations around a table on a festive day, we will be just a name, increasingly faceless, until we disappear into the anonymous crowd of a distant generation." Awarded numerous distinctions, including the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize in France, the 2016 Strega Prize in Italy, and shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, this book has confirmed Annie Ernaux as one of the most important voices in French literature of this century.