The book’s title, The Years , is literal. Ernaux is obsessed with the flow of time. She uses a technique she calls “verre de mémoire” (a glass of memory)—fragments floating in a solution. One paragraph might describe 1957, the next 1982, the next 2003. The jumps are jarring, mimicking the way real memory works: you hear a song from 1995, and suddenly you are there, then back to 2024.
The translator of Seneler into Turkish, Siren İdemen, faced the Herculean task of converting the specific French terms of feeling into a Turkish vernacular. The result is a text that feels simultaneously foreign and intimately local. When Ernaux writes about the shame of her working-class accent at university, a Turkish reader from a rural background feels the exact same sting of “taşralı olmak” (being a provincial). Seneler- Annie Ernaux
The book is but follows the arc of French society from 1940 to 2006 (post-WWII to early 21st century). It is divided into sections anchored by: The book’s title, The Years , is literal