Engelska

Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work, <em>The Years </em>is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux invents a form that is subjective and impersonal, private and communal, and a new genre - the collective autobiography - in order to capture the passing of time. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, <em>The Years</em> is 'a <em>Remembrance of Things Past </em>for our age of media domination and consumerism' (<em>New York Times</em>), a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman.

A powerful meditation on ageing and familial love, <i>I Remain in Darkness</i> recounts Annie Ernaux's attempts to help her mother recover from Alzheimer's disease, and then, when that proves futile, to bear witness to the older woman's gradual decline and her own experience as a daughter losing a beloved parent. Haunting and devastatingly poignant, <i>I Remain in Darkness</i> showcases Ernaux's unique talent for evoking life's darkest and most bewildering episodes.

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep that child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist, and ends up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly dies. In <i>Happening</i>, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days. Clearly, cleanly, she gleans the meanings of her experience.