Jacques is a conscript in the 35^th regiment, one of those young men sent to Algeria in 1959-1960 to – or so he was told – participate in a late phase of the war, learn the ropes, and become a real man. He has no choice but to leave both his father, and above all, his sweetheart, Jeanne, behind. In Algeria, Jacques will reconnect with a childhood friend, François, a self-assured young officer. But the longer the war stretches on, the less Jacques feels like he knows his old friend.

After Cent sept ans (One Hundered and Seven Years, winner of the Alain-Fournier Prize), Marie-Aimée Lebreton returns to the Algerian War, this time to explore the fate of French soldiers caught up in a conflict they neither understand nor care about. A luminous book that reads like a legend.

This novella adapts the rhythm and poetical style of a legend, the better to show us the inanity of the Algerian War, into which young French men were drafted against their will. Page after page, we see Jacques, a conscript, lose his illusions until he no longer has the slightest hope to cling to.