The Years

''Memory pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.'' 

 She strikes a pose and the camera shutter clicks... A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men''s bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover, seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click.

The Years/Les années is Annie Ernaux''s critically acclaimed ''masterpiece'' (Guardian), charting a woman''s personal and political life against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Europe.Eline Arbo''s inventive stage adaptation was premiered as De jaren by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2022. It was first performed, in an English-language version by Stephanie Bain – after the translations by Alison L. Strayer and Tanya Leslie – at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2024, with a cast of five women collectively bringing to life the story of one woman, and a whole continent.This new edition of the play is published alongside the West End transfer in 2025.

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