"Five Years of Obedience" (1978) is a novel by the English writer and screenwriter Bernice Rubens (1928–2004), author of 16 novels, nominee and winner (1970) of the Booker Prize. This book is a dramatic and at the same time ironic story about a certain Miss Jean Hawkins, for whom the moment of retirement coincided with the beginning of an extravagant love affair with her own diary, a gift from colleagues at her former work and which completely transformed her future life. Obeying the instructions that she herself writes in her diary, the heroine goes through the path of overcoming loneliness, finding excruciating pain and previously unknown pleasures. “Five Years of Obedience” is a tragicomic story about voluntary submission and the manipulation of people with each other, about secret passions and the meaning of life. The book is published in Russian for the first time.