As a theatre production of the Nobel prize-winning writer’s acclaimed autobiography The Years opens in the UK, the actors playing her at different ages – including Deborah Findlay, Gina McKee and Romola Garai – talk about what the work means to them
Annie Ernaux was 61 years old when, “one September morning” in 2001, two planes crashed into New York’s twin towers. “Our image of the world was turned upside down,” she wrote in her powerful collective autobiography The Years. “We saw the right was advancing everywhere. We turned away. We focused on ourselves again… we were mutating. We didn’t know what our new shape would be.”
For the actor Anjli Mohindra, the event evokes a more personal mutation. She had just turned 11 and started at secondary school. Her first period had begun the previous day. “I’d forgotten about it until we started rehearsing,” she says, but the memory swam back into her mind because, as well as dealing with world events, Ernaux is fascinated by the evolution of her own body. “I don’t want to say she’s obsessed, but she thinks a lot about her menstrual cycle and her menopause and things like that.”
