The Years

"We had long discussions about this. Firstly, it’s fundamental to say that it was accepted by the administrators of the prize because it is published under both fiction and non-fiction categories, so it was considered eligible. We then had a really interesting, philosophical conversation about what fiction is and what it means. We were debating this ethically and linguistically and philosophically. At one point I found myself inspired to go back to the Proto-Indo-European roots of the word ‘fiction,’ looking back to when civilization itself starts, 6,000 or so years ago and beyond. It comes from a root that means ‘to shape or to form’ as well as ‘to feign.’ And neuroscientists are understanding that memory is incredibly important to imagination—we can’t imagine a new idea unless we access an experience or a memory of some kind—so actually the boundary between memory and imagination is much more porous than we realised previously, physiologically. “The boundary between memory and imagination is much more porous that we realised” So we thought that, actually, there’s a lot in this work that is obviously autofiction . And there’s so much imagination in there—that that’s why we were happy. It’s eligible, we were happy to engage with it as a work of literature, and I think that it’s one of those books that enriches your idea of what literature can do. It’s a really brilliant work. The rhythm of both the ideas in play and the words is incredibly seductive. Again there are some lines from it that are very pertinent to our discussion, about whether people think it’s okay to be there on a literature prize. Ernaux says: “The web,” as in the World Wide Web, “was the royal road for remembrance.” It’s this notion of what you do with memory. It discusses an incredibly important 60 years, and is a very important record of the female experience across those six decades. Totally. As a historian I recognize the importance of the period it deals with. The collapse of old powers and the emergence of new ones, of new ways of thinking. I think it does an extraordinary job as a record of the shared experience over those years. It’s also hugely, hugely enjoyable."