NHB Modern Plays-The Years

The powerful stage adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux's critically acclaimed 'masterpiece' (Guardian), published alongside the West End production in 2025.

'Memory never stops. It 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.

Les Années (The Years) 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, with a cast of five women collectively bringing to life an unapologetic portrait of one woman, and a whole continent. Arbo directed her adaptation at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2024, in an English language version by Stephanie Bain – with reference to translations by Alison L. Strayer and Tanya Leslie. In 2025, The Years transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End, produced by Sonia Friedman Productions.