The Years
A memoir-like book that builds a collective memory of late-20th-century French society from personal recollection and public history.
Work Information
A memoir-like book that builds a collective memory of late-2…
A memoir-like book that builds a collective memory of late-20th-century French society from personal recollection and public history.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Seven Stories Press
- Published
- 2017-11-21
- Pages
- 240 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14 x 1.6 x 20.9 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781609807870
- ISBN-10
- 1609807871
- Price
- 3072 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/History/Europe/France
WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE One of the New York Times ’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008 The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective. On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir "written" by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the "I" for the "we" (or "they", or "one") as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents' generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents' generation (and could be writing of her own book): "From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the "we" and impersonal pronouns." Co-winner of the 2018 French-American Foundation Translation Prize in Nonfiction Winner of the 2017 Marguerite Yourcenar Prize for her entire body of work Winner of the 2016 Strega European Prize
Born in 1940, ANNIE ERNAUX grew up in Normandy, studied at Rouen University, and later taught high 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. Ernaux won the prestigious Prix Renaudot for A Man's Place when 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 include Simple Passion and A Woman's Story, which was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. Ernaux’s most recent work, The Years , has received the Françoise-Mauriac Prize of the French Academy, the Marguerite Duras Prize, the Strega European Prize, the French Language Prize, and the Télégramme Readers Prize. The English edition, translated by Alison L. Strayer, won the 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.
Reviews
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Everything It's Reputed To Be
If there were twenty stars in this rating system, I'd give this book twenty--or a hundred if there were a hundred stars. Yes, it's mostly about the author and France, yet in both cases it's applicable to people in a great many countries who have witnessed the current age as it has developed, post WWII to 2006. It's not a novel; it's not fiction. It's a mix of memoir and sociology, as the author clearly states within the book. I've already read it twice, and I'll probably read it again in the near future.
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未知の読書体験
戦後生まれの著者が、著者の接した人達（祖父・祖母、その他近隣者）から聞いた年代記と、彼女が実際に経験し、見、聞き、読んだ世界を、会話、感情表現等を一切含まず淡々と綴っている。古くはディエンビエンフー、アルジェの戦いから、サダムフセイン、アルカイダ。それ以外にフランス政権の移行、学生間の流行、映画、小説、メディア、その他、無数のフランスの日常が述べられている。文章はエスプリが効き、時には辛辣「全てのフランス人は移民が多すぎると思っている」、時には淡々と「アタリを持っているのがステータス」と語っている。この様にして著者を取り囲む社会・歴史と自身の恋愛体験を記述している。著者の豊富な才能が感じられるが、悲しいかな私にとって「おフランス」は未知の世界、著者と似た体験をした同年代フランス人の半分も理解できません。それでも2022年ノーベル文学賞受賞作家にふさわしい作品で、全く未知の読書体験でした。
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Very unique kind of prose, you will love it or hate it
Not my style
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A LOVELY EVOCATION OF THE YEARS 1940-2007
Through the eyes of a French woman we see a kaleidoscopic view of the world between her birth in 1940 and 2007. Originally written in French, the English translation is brisk with many references to changes in France over those years. A lively and entertaining book that I read from cover to cover on a 10 hour flight, I highly recommend it. She won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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What's most important to know is that there is no fixed way to write a novel.
As a writer I'm interested in good novels by fellow writers. 'The Years' interests me a great deal and also impressed me by its stylistic progression of ideas first launched by Robbe-Grillet's 'For a New Novel', in which he said the New Novel will progress beyond his particular style of writing, or that of his colleagues; we see this clearly in the Annie Ernaux"s 'The Years', which is closer to another earlier fabulous novel 'Les Choses' by Georges Perec, also another new advancement of the Nouveau Roman outside the usual circle of writers associated with this style. To the advancement of this style I would also add Claude Simon's 'The Georgics', and Patrick Chamoiseau's 'Texaco' or Severo Sarduy's 'Cobra'. It was a great surprise for me to read 'The Years', because I had just published my novel 'Cornucopia' which, without having read Ernaux's 'The Years', came close to interrogating the same passing of time as 'History' and my personal history of growing up, and researching the history of my original country from the late 16th century to 1966 in the South American colony that became known as British Guiana, then Independent Guyana after 1966, where my novel ends. It's very important for a writer not to feel alone in his endeavors, even if unpopular, or disregarded.
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Not an autobiography
The coherent narrative of one generation with the author’s life in the backdrop is one so unique a style. A must read.
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Excelente.
Una manera diferente de presentar una biografía a la par de señalar hechos históricos. Su pensamiento está alineado a la historia y política francesa dejando fuera hechos de trascendencia mundial como la presencia de JFK frente al muro de Berlín así como su asesinato y el de Martin Luther King. Buena escritora con un pasado tormentoso que revela en su libro pasajes íntimos.