The Years (French: Les Années) is a 2008 non-fiction book by Annie Ernaux. It has been described as a "hybrid" memoir, spanning the period of 1941 to 2006.^[1][2][3] Ernaux's English publisher, Seven Stories Press, described it as an autobiography that is "at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective."^[3]

In the book, Ernaux writes about herself in the third person (elle, or "she" in English) for the first time, providing a vivid look at French society just after the Second World War until the early 2000s.^[4] It is the moving social story of a woman and of the evolving society she lived in. With this feature of book, Edmund White described it as a "collective autobiography", in his review for The New York Times.^[3]

The Years was very well received by French critics and is considered by many to be her magnum opus.^[5]

It won the 2008 Françoise-Mauriac Prize of the Académie française, the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize,^[6] the 2008 French Language Prize, the 2009 Télégramme Readers Prize, and the 2016 Premio Strega Europeo Prize.^{[citation needed]} Translated by Alison L. Strayer, The Years won the 31st Annual French-American Foundation Translation Prize in the non-fiction category.^[7]

Alison L. Strayer's English translation was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019.^[8]