Colombe Sous La Lune

COLOMBE AND THE MOON By Laurence Campa The trenches of the First World War. A French captain commands a detachment of men, and only the memory of a lost love connects him to his former life... Still barely more than a child, Thomas sets off to war. He's running away from Colombe, the young woman he dreams about, and talks to inside his head; he needs her as an escape route, a welcome gentleness, a happy daydream. But reality constantly comes back to him and, as day follows night, the darkness keeps gaining ground. Thomas must resist it: in the process he will be broken but he will also mature. In these pages, that reveal an impressive talent for reconstruction, we experience the "storms of steel" that destroy everything in their path. We see the mud in the trench that the soldiers have called Starfish, the shell holes, the unspoken tactics, but also the silence of waiting and the tiny shreds of hope. And a return to life. A short, breath-taking novel carried by its otherworldly lunar atmosphere. Laurence Campa is a literary researcher: her most notable work is a biography of Apollinaire (Gallimard, 2013). Colombe and the Moon is her first novel.