Prix Marguerite-Duras for "Les Années"

In 2008, Annie Ernaux received the Prix Marguerite-Duras for her book Les Années (The Years).[5][16] Sources document the year but not the precise award date, so it is recorded as a year‑only event. The prize, named after the influential French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras, honors works that explore memory and the passage of time.

Les Années is widely considered Ernaux’s crowning achievement, a sweeping "collective autobiography" that intertwines her life with that of her generation from the postwar era through the early 2000s.[1][4][19] The Marguerite-Duras prize recognized this ambitious reworking of autobiography into a hybrid of personal narrative, social history, and cultural critique.

Historically, the award underscores the feminist lineage connecting Ernaux and Duras—two writers who transformed intimate, often painful experiences into literary explorations of memory, desire, and power. It further solidified Ernaux’s status as a major chronicler of contemporary French society, particularly from the perspective of women navigating changing norms.

Although the exact day of the ceremony is unknown, the 2008 prize forms part of a cluster of recognitions for Les Années that year, highlighting the book’s central role in her oeuvre and its influence on debates around autofiction, generational memory, and the representation of ordinary life.