This sweeping generational novel, which spans the 20th century, begins with an old man considering a photograph of his long-dead siblings and mother. His bitterness about his family, with its absent father and far older brothers and sisters, is painful to him still. Yet this familial bitterness pales when compared with his profound irritation at the recent disappearance of the highly skilled barmistress Hayet from his local bar. She was, after all, a woman who knew how to make a fine home away from home for her patrons—even for lonely ones like Marcel. A succession of would-be barmen and hostesses descends on the Corsican bar in the hopes of taking Hayet's place, with disastrous and often hilarious results. But then Marcel's illegitimate grandson Matthieu and his streetwise best friend Libero return from the Parisian university where they had been studying philosophy and decide to have a go at running the bar themselves. Initially the lifelong friends are a great...

A challenging read that encourages reflection, The Principle examines a world inching closer to it's own destruction. Overpopulation, nuclear war, fascism, contemporary capitalism, and climate crisis all play roles in this epistolary novel in which a young philosopher grapples with the life of Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Prize-winning German physicist. As he examines the dark historical events of the early 20th century alongside the luminous elegance of Heisenberg's theoretical work, the narrator provides an intimate account of his own youthful struggles and desperate attempts to make sense of a fractured, globalized world. How could a man with such a beautiful mind have participated in such atrocities? Jérôme Ferrari offers a compelling, unflinching vision of the failings of European culture. The Principle is a hypnotic glimpse into the mysteries of the physical world and a deeply personal historical interrogation that will remind...

A tale of two torturers--Where I Left My Soul is a powerful exploration of guilt and identity in the savagery of the Algerian War. Captain André Degorce is reunited with Lieutenant Horace Andreani, with whom he experienced the horrors of combat and imprisonment in Vietnam. Captives now pass from the Captain's hands into Andreani's: one-time victims have become torturers. Andreani has fully embraced his new status, but Degorce has lost all sense of himself, only finding peace when he is with Tahar, a commander in the National Liberation Army. Tahar's cell now acts as a confessional for Andreani, with the jailor opening up to his prisoner.