The Wound

In a French village, Solange celebrates her birthday and retirement. Her brother Bernard, known as Feu-de-Bois, a drinker estranged from almost everyone, turns up penniless with a gold brooch for her. She refuses it, and in his rage he storms off to terrorize the family of Saïd, a North African who settled in the village. The scene stirs up what Bernard and his cousin Rabut lived through as conscripts near Oran from 1960: patrols through the hills, raided villages, cruelty on both sides, a comrade like Février who led the worst of it. Back in France in 1962, the men went back to ordinary lives on a diet of tranquillizers and never spoke of it, not even to their wives. Moving between that night and the war, the novel follows how forty years of silence have shaped their lives.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

280 pages in the original

Genres

War (assigned by AI)

Set in

France, Algeria, 1960–1962

First published

2009 by Éditions de Minuit

Author's age

42 when first published

ISBN

9782707320759 (original)

9780803239876 (University of Nebraska Press, United States)

More

Wikidata