De Jaren Het Nationale Theater / Eline Arbo

In search of lost time

The Years is a performance with an all-female cast by director Eline Arbo. Based on the European bestseller by Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature.

In The Years, five actresses together tell the life of one woman, against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world. She grows up among the rubble of the Second World War, escapes her middle-class background and becomes a writer with a sharp political and social consciousness. Using photos, songs and news reports, she talks about emancipation, womanhood, sexuality, class differences and individual opportunities. Musical, cheerful and melancholic memories are evoked in individual scenes. By following one life, we see the world change. The hyper-personal history of a French woman thus becomes a universal biography of post-war Western Europe.

'All images will disappear. Death erases everything in one second and so we must save something from the time we will never be again.' - from The Years

Director Eline Arbo

“When I read The Years I immediately knew: this book was written for me. Annie Ernaux's style is so striking and universal that all those memories also resonate in me. Her images evoke a feeling of nostalgia, but at the same time also shame and anger.”