A Very Long Engagement - Softcover

Japrisot, Sebastien

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000654813X ISBN 13: 9780006548133

Publisher: Flamingo, 1995

Synopsis

One night in 1917, five French soldiers, court-martialled for self-inflicted wounding, are pushed into no-man's-land and later found dead. The youngest of the five has a fiancee, Mathilda. This is the story of Mathilda's quest, after the war, to discover what has become of her fiance.

About this title

From the Back Cover

One bitter January night in 1917 five French soldiers, court-martialled for self-inflicted wounds, are pushed, their hands bound, into No-man's-land. A couple of days later, after the German trenches have been overrun, five French copses are given a hasty burial on the site. The youngest of the five condemned men has left a fiancée back home: Mathilde, only daughter of a rich industrialist, and confined since childhood to a wheelchair. The war over, Mathilde sets out to discover what has become of her fiancé.

'It has been a battle to avoid writing of Sébastien Japrisot's novel about World War 1 as a kind of latter-day 'War and Peace'. I lost. It is a kind of 'War and Peace''
RICHARD EDER, 'Los Angeles Times'

'A fierce elliptical novel that's both a gripping and philosophical thriller and a highly moving meditation on the emotional consequences of war'
MICHIKO KAKUTANI, 'New York Times'

'Only the best historical fiction can make the journey into a distant time and return with a believable sense of how things really were. That Japrisot's book has done so is a mark of his great talent and experience as a writer'
PAUL WATKINS, 'Washington Post'

'Clever, highly readable… Neither predictable nor surprising, the dénouement, when it finally happens, is shocking, moving and horribly convincing'
MICHAEL ESTORICK, 'Literary Review'

Edition details

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: French
• ISBN 10: 000654813X
• ISBN 13: 9780006548133
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320