The Years

Annie Ernaux tells the story of her entire life without once using the word “I.” Instead she writes “we” and “one,” turning personal memory into the collective experience of a generation of French women. The Nobel Prize winner’s masterpiece is autofiction at its most formally daring.

Why Start Here

The Years is the ideal entry point to autofiction because it shows the form at its most ambitious. Ernaux does not simply tell her life story. She captures the texture of each decade, from the postwar years through May ‘68 through the rise of consumerism, by describing the photographs, songs, products, and phrases that defined them. The personal and the historical become inseparable.

What to Expect

A short, dense book that reads like a prose poem of collective memory. No conventional plot or characters. The effect is cumulative and deeply moving.