translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer

Alison L. Strayer is a Canadian writer and literary translator based in Paris. She also writes fiction in French: her novel Jardin et prairie was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for French-language fiction and the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal.

Strayer translates from French into English, working across fiction, memoir and literary nonfiction. She has translated authors including Yasmina Reza, Vladimir Pozner and Abdellah Taïa, but her sustained collaboration with Annie Ernaux is central to her work. Her Ernaux translations include A Girl’s Story, Getting Lost, The Young Man, Look at the Lights, My Love and The Other Girl.

Her translation of The Years received the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and, with Ernaux, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. It was also shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. The book poses an unusual challenge: private memory expands into a record of postwar France, assembled from photographs, advertising, songs, public events and changing language.

Start with The Years. It is the WebToTell selection and the clearest introduction to Strayer’s careful handling of Ernaux’s shifts between individual and collective experience. Readers who want something more intimate afterward might choose Getting Lost, while A Girl’s Story shows the same precision applied to memory, shame and self-revision.