This 2013 winner of the Goncourt Prize was lauded by critics and was a true publishing phenomenon in France – where it has already sold more than half a million copies. It’s writer Pierre Lemaitre was until then famous for writing crime novels and surprised his loyal following by switching genres. That this risk was crowned with the French speaking world’s most prestigious literary award, was indeed a pleasant surprise for many.
Lemaitre’s novel is a moving ode to the human capacity for survival and, at the same time, a fresh and daring portrait of a society broken down by one of man’s cruelest inventions: war.
In November 1918, just a few days before the armistice, Lieutenant d’Aulnay-Pradelle orders an absurd offensive that will culminate with many soliders and wounded. Of these, two soldiers- Albert Maillard and Édouard Péricourt -who are both scarred for life by the incident, are drawn together by a miraculous and dramatic incident that will inexorably link their destinies. Édouard, from a wealthy family and with an exceptional talent for drawing, has suffered a horrible mutilation and refuses to meet his father and sister again. Albert, of humble origins and a coward, is prepared to do anything to make Édouard’s life a little bearable. After all it is to him that Albert owes his life.
As for Pradelle, a down-and-out aristocrat, cynical and womanizing, he is obsessed with regaining his social status. Back in post-war Paris, the three ex-combatants rebel against a reality that condemns them to misery and oblivion. Thus, Édouard concocts an ingenious scam in order to take revenge on his father, who always rejected him for his sensitivity/sexual orientation and artistic abilities.
In the process he finds a way to aid the faithful Albert, whose itch is to flee to the antipodes to forget Cécile, his lost love. But the most ambitious of the three is Pradelle, who ends up shaking the conscience of all France through a monumental criminal operation conceived to amass a quick fortune. The obstacles are considerable, but the will of the three seems infinite. Lemaitre used a real scandal of the 1920s to develop his novel, and invented another to keep it entertaining through and through.
In a brilliant fusion of popular literature and high literature, Pierre Lemaitre has created a thrilling story that progresses at the pace of a detective plot. Masterfully integrating elements from genres as diverse as adventure stories, psychological drama, social and political chronicles and anti-war speeches, the narrative is a superb blend of humour, rage and compassion that will undoubtedly captivate all kinds of readers.
Babel School of Languages 