The Red Years (Les Années Rouges) features three key texts by renowned and controversial contemporary French philosopher, Alain Badiou: Theory of Contradiction, Of Ideology, and The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic. Hitherto unavailable in English, these three texts elucidate the formative role of Badiou's Maoist 'phase' - an essential moment in his political and philosophical trajectory. Furthermore, these texts are vital to any understanding of radical French thought and politics in the 1970s, and in the wake of the Cultural Revolution.

The book also features a new preface by Badiou, as well as an essay from Tzuchien Tho and a conclusion from Bruno Bosteels, which argues fro the presence of Maoism in Badiou's mature thought.