On Leave

by Daniel Anselme, David Bellos (Translator)

A long-lost French novel in which three soldiers return home from an unpopular, unspeakable war

When On Leave was published in Paris in 1957, as France’s engagement in Algeria became ever more bloody, it told people things they did not want to hear. It vividly described what it was like for soldiers to return home from an unpopular war in a faraway place. The book received a handful of reviews, it was never reprinted, it disappeared from view. With no outcome to the war in sight, its power to disturb was too much to bear.
     Through David Bellos’s translation, this lost classic has been rediscovered. Spare, forceful, and moving, it describes a week in the lives of a sergeant, a corporal, and an infantryman, each home on leave in Paris. What these soldiers have to say can’t be heard, can’t even be spoken; they find themselves strangers in their own city, unmoored from their lives. Full of sympathy and feeling, informed by the many hours Daniel Anselme spent talking to conscripts in Paris, On Leave is a timeless evocation of what the history books can never record: the shame and the terror felt by men returning home from war.

Genres: Fiction, France, War, Algeria, Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Daniel Anselme est né Daniel Rabinovitch en 1927, et a adopté le nom Anselme alors qu’il servait dans la Résistance française avec son père.

Anselme a beaucoup voyagé en tant que journaliste, et était connu comme un conteur et un habitué des cafés de la rive gauche.

Manifestant actif contre la guerre de la France avec l’Algérie, il s’est exprimé sur ce sujet dans à la Guerre en en congé (1957), son premier roman.

Anselme a publié un deuxième roman, Relations , en 1964, a créé la revue Les Cahiers de Mai 1968 à 1974, et était l’un des dirigeants de Solidarité Radio à Paris en 1981-1982.

Il a publié un compte semi-autobiographique de ses expériences de guerre appelées Le compagnon secret en 1984, et mourut cinq ans plus tard à Paris.

On lui doit également La Permission et en contribution, Voyages.

Reviews

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seemed to him ever more insistently that he and Valette were dead, that they'd died long before, with a bullet in their heads in some far-off wadi.

This is one of the best (the best?) novels I've read about the disorientation of soldiers feel, after experiencing extremes of bloody conflict, when they return to the 'normality' of civilian life. The novel much more understated and less sentimental than other novels I've read on the subject.

This novel perfectly captures the complete dislocation between those returning from the war, and those who never left. I love it for the way it refuses to provide relief or redemption. The soldiers feel ennui and despair when returning to their homes on leave, and cynicism and helplessness when they must return once more to a war they know is pointless and unpopular and that will probably kill them.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the edition translated by David Bellos (Penguin. 2014).As I have not read the original French text, I cannot say whether it is poorly translated or difficult to translate. However, I found the novel dull and depressing and in some places either lacking in meaning or lacking in context. Maybe Anselme meant it to be read like this but it's not easy going. Some good, poignant, political points about the war in Algeria, Colonialism, and the psychological effects of war however.

[Josh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to enjoy this. I really, really did.

This book describes a week in the life of 3 soldiers, while on leave (creative enough title, eh!). The 3 men are drafted into an army (Algerian War era 1954-1962)that they have no ambition to be a part of and shares their actions and thoughts during the aforementioned timeframe.

The inner sleeve describes this as delving deep within the psychology of the mind of a soldier that has seen the atrocities of war; the inner turmoil that changes a man/woman for the rest of their lives. While that may be the case, in general, I didn't see much of this from Anselme. The writing seems well thought out (Anselme was a soldier as well), but the characters the story is based upon aren't naturally developed and instead of focusing on the war aspect, it seems as though it was more politically based.

Not a total waste of time, but I can reasonably say that of all the fiction I've read on war, this might be the weakest.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the great novels about what war does to soldiers, specifically conscript soldiers and even more specifically conscript soldiers in post WWII armies. The soldiers in 'On Leave' are not the soldiers of an army conceived under the rubric of 'a nation under arms' but the conscripts fighting a war that wasn't a war to defend a part of France that wasn't France and who fought, lost their youth and died because they had not the power, money or connections to avoid it.

"...(A soldier) had (only) to look at a young woman for an instant for her to move out of the way. Three soldiers out on the town can be extremely vulgar, after all. Paris likes its soldiers only when they're parading tamely on the other side of white crowd-control barriers. But it looks down on them and doesn't want to see them when they're close up. In no other city are people so full of crude nationalist bluster and yet so easily ruffled, so refined, so tasteful, and so selfish. Paris, being elegant, is ashamed of its badly dressed soldiers: yet it constantly consumes whole cohorts of them, painting itself with their blood, morning, noon, and night, like a tart using lipstick..." (page 159 of the 2014 David Bellos translation from Penguin Books).

Of course there is nothing unique about Paris, or Parisians, ask the grunts who returned from Vietnam, the 'Zinky' boys who fought for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the veterans of Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini armies (they fought an eight year war 1980-1988) and I have no doubt in the near future Russia will be full of the forgotten soldiers of Putin's bloody war in Ukraine.

The soldiers in 'On Leave' by Daniel Anselme are not unique but they are not indistinguishable 'representatives' of a lost generation. They are horribly real and true. War is hell but war in 'The West' post WWII has almost never war, it was obfuscated under elisions of untruths. That you have no choice but to die in a police action rather than a war doesn't change its awfulness, it only enables others to forget you with a clear conscience.

I can't praise this brilliant short novel enough. 'On Leave' is about colonial war and, though many people try and explain the complexities of France's Algerian debacle in terms of Algeria's 'legal' status as part of France no one in 'On Leave' thinks of what is happening in Algeria as anything but a colonial war like the one already lost in Vietnam.

The soldiers in 'On Leave' feel betrayed, most powerfully by the Communist party, but also by their families and friends. They see no end to the war and they see no happy return to civilian life nor do they expect any understanding, let alone recognition of what they have lost.

A beautiful, painful, read which is so much greater than its setting. War is hell, that it was hell for the people of Algeria just as it was for the people of Vietnam and Afghanistan, goes without saying, but it is even more important that we who send young men to die take on our share of the hell.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 3 out of 5]

No matter how well written they are, I have trouble reading the stories in The Yellow Birds and Redeployment. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are too painful, too recent; the savage ruin of human life so pointless. I'm wondering if that's how the French felt when La Permission appeared in 1957, in the midst of France's vicious war for Algeria. According to translator David Bellos, the novel "had few readers and only a handful of reviews. It was never reprinted."

Anselme's short novel takes a long time to get anywhere, but it gathers force in the last 50 pages and ends with a powerful, almost cinematically-despairing scene of soldiers being returned to the front. The three young men on leave are men the civilized world prefers to ignore. Anselme's bitterness is palpable.

Paris likes its soldiers only when they're parading tamely on the other side of white crowd-control barriers. But it looks down at them and doesn't want to see them when they're close up. In no other city are people so full of crude nationalist bluster and yet so easily ruffled, so refined, so tasteful, and so selfish. Paris, being elegant, is ashamed of its badly dressed soldiers: yet it constantly consumes whole cohorts of them, painting itself with their blood, morning, noon, and night, like a tart using lipstick. That's what was going through Lachaume's mind as he crossed Pont de la Concorde.

This polemic doesn't align itself with a political position. Anselme is simply enraged by the waste.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1956, this novel about three French conscripts on leave from the "police action" in Algeria, sank without much of a trace following its original publication in 1957. Its appearance in the early years of what was to be an extremely bloody and costly war for control of Algeria was an unwelcome poke in the eye of French citizens, who only shortly after being routed from Vietnam, probably weren't too keen to hear voices dissenting from the fight to retain their largest and most important overseas territory. The translator's introduction does an excellent job of providing this necessary context for the reader.

The book itself lurches around in despair as the three men vacillate between trying to have a good time in Paris and the fury and frustration of being conscripts in a war that no one seems to notice back home. American readers will, no doubt, find striking parallels, not only to our Vietnam experience, but also the present day wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the former was a conscript situation, and the latter ostensibly with volunteer forces, it's hard not to see an element of economic conscription in the modern US forces. In any event, the cries of the three soldiers of this book -- that their youth is being squandered, and that they don't know what their fighting for, and no one can understand what they are going through, and there's no end in sight -- all resonate as just as clearly some 55 years later.

As fiction with an urgent message, it works, however the style is ragged and staccato. There are some great set scenes here and there (most notably, a very uncomfortable family meal), but its too fragmentary for my taste. There's a blend of some aspects of existentialist themes with the jazzy looseness of the New Wave cinema that was bubbling up just at the time the novel was published. Probably mainly of interest to readers of French literature and those with an interest in fiction with a political stance.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the things I appreciated most about On Leave was that, and how much, it highlighted the mundane -- the business of everyday living -- as opposed to the Xs and Os of war, and I felt this way for two reasons: 1) most of life is mundane, even for soldiers, and 2) when a novelist gets into the mapping of battle and motives and causes and outcomes, we, as readers, begin either rationalizing or condemning the conflict under discussion -- and if the writer's hope is to demonstrate the horrific waste of war, the focus must be on what has been lost, on the shells the soldiers are in the process of becoming. Anselme nails this -- he doesn't give a damn about whether or not the war is useless or can be justified, because one shouldn't give a damn. War lays waste to the futures and welfare and health of those who fight it -- and because those futures are precious, nothing else matters. Some reviewers see a thinness of character development, but I think Anselme gives us a great deal in his protagonists with which to empathize (Lachaume's abandonment and his fear of confronting his wife and the grotesque existence of such a fear in a world riddled with much more immediately pressing things to fear, like death on a battlefield; Valette's having been pressed into a conflict that he is at ideological odds with and the impotent rage he feels about needing his family to do what he cannot to vouchsafe his future; Lasteyrie's randiness and his flouting of convention and rules as means to reclaiming his sense of self from the political and militaristic mechanisms that have appropriated it) -- if the characters ever feel less fleshed out or well-rounded than we're accustomed to seeing characters, it's because their own ideas about what they have become and are becoming is dictated by one thing and one thing only: the need to live and their belief that they will not. If the other characters feel like faces that merely enter the frame on occasion, it's because they are -- our protagonists don't know them anymore. The book, therefore, pins down the experience of alienation almost as well as I've ever seen a writer address that theme, and I found it all exceedingly moving at times, particularly in Anselme's development of the theme in images, metaphors and situations (most obviously Lachaume's irrational, paralyzing fear -- during the lunch at the Valette home -- that he and Valette were, in fact, dead; and most beautifully in Lachaume's observation of the man and woman walking ahead of him, holding hands and parting when oncoming pedestrians force them to, only to return to one another's side to touch hands -- how easy it is to take connection for granted, how unbearable when the circumstances of one's life have made connection impossible).

Another thing I really loved is how good the translation must be. I don't read French, but one can tell a bad translation if the prose feels labored or overly concerned with ornamentation (see Archer's translation of Kristin Lavransdatter for a bad example, Nunnally's translation of it for a good example). This translation reads so lucidly and so like a novel written in the mid-late-50s, as it was, that the translation feels like a noteworthy achievement. The prose felt a little like Salinger's at times, and a great deal like the prose one finds in Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's and Plath's The Bell Jar -- it's crisp and contained and precise. And the novel felt very much cut from the cloth of its time and place thematically, too -- as I was reading, I was increasingly reminded of one of my favorite films, Cleo from 5 to 7, released in 1962 and in which we see, in real time, a French pop star wandering around Paris as she awaits the results of a cancer test -- she, like the soldiers in On Leave, is killing time as she awaits a terminal likelihood or eventuality, and during her walk she encounters and befriends a young soldier waiting to disembark for Algeria. Both the Anselme novel and the Agnes Varda film are piercing contemplations of feeling wholly cut off from collective existence, wholly adrift and incapable of even knowing what to do with one's terror. I appreciate the different ways Anselme allows this to manifest in his narrative, whether it's Lachaume's flashes of anger, Valette's breakdown in the arms of his father on the train platform or Lasteyrie's constant gaming of controlled systems (which seems an attempt, by him, to persuade himself that if a phone booth or a pinball game can be manipulated, perhaps his fate can, too). I really loved these characters -- as characters and as people.

I also loved how evocative the novel was -- how canny its descriptions of Paris, bit even moreso how canny its descriptions of one's apprehension of place. I've never been to Paris, but as the characters walk along the Seine, marveling at the view's power to intoxicate, I was reminded of my need of Wyoming's open spaces and my adoration of London.

The lunch scene was my favorite bit in the book, in large part because it showed, powerfully, the disconnect between life as it is and life as idealists wish it were -- and just how raw and filled with sorrow the space between those positions (those who live in the world and those who condemn that world from a distance because of its failure to square with their political dreams) can be. (We see a similar disconnect in the novel's first scenes, with the veteran reciting his memoirs -- war has become some romanticized thing to him, and is anything but for the protagonists there beginning a respite from it.) If characters are talking of frog legs and snails, it's partly because they're purposefully avoiding the elephant in the room -- the crushing devastation these young men have experienced and the horrors they've likely both witnessed and perpetrated. Anselme's awareness that human beings skirt these things with small talk rings absolutely true, and makes the presence of that elephant in the room all the more haunting and heartwrenching.

Anyhow -- loved On Leave. It was chosen in my book club, and I don't mind saying I was very apprehensive about it. It had been a three-star book until that lunch scene, and then it rose to four stars -- and might have hit five stars had the last page or so not felt so polemical. Anselme made explicit, at the very end, what had throughout been wonderfully implicit, and so the very ending felt like a minor letdown. But otherwise, bravo Mr. Anselme.

[miss.mesmerized mesmerized · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Adieu Paris“ – dabei kommen sie doch gerade erst in der Hauptstadt an, die drei Soldaten Valette, Lachaume und Lasteyrie, die zehn Tage Heimaturlaub genießen sollen. Doch was ist noch übrig von dem Land und der Stadt, die sie vor ihrem Einzug in den Algerienkrieg kannten? Nicht mehr viel. Die Stadt ist ihnen fremd geworden, ebenso die Familie und Freunde. Es bleiben nur die anderen Soldaten, die die Erfahrungen des Krieges geteilt haben und sich ebenfalls nicht mehr zugehörig fühlen und erkennen, dass das Schicksal ihnen die Jugend genommen hat für einen unsinnigen Krieg. So streifen sie umher auf der Suche nach einem Sinn, den es nicht gibt.

Daniel Anselmes Roman, der erst jetzt wiederentdeckt wurde und zur Erstveröffentlichung in den 1950ern wenig Beachtung gefunden hat, schildert das, was wir inzwischen als Erkenntnis aus vielen Kriegen haben: die Soldaten kommen zurück und finden ihr altes Leben nicht mehr. Weder können sie sich wieder einfinden noch wissen diejenigen, die zurückgeblieben waren, wie sie ihnen begegnen sollen, zu tief sind die Wunden, die die Kriege gerissen haben. Anselme wählt ein unbequemes Thema, dem sich die Regierungen vieler Länder nicht stellen wollen: sie schicken junge Menschen, ganze Generationen in sinnlose Kriege und zerstören nicht nur die Leben derjenigen, die in den Kampfhandlung sterben und deren Familien, sondern auch die derjenigen, die zurückkehren müssen in eine ihnen fremd gewordene Welt. Aus jeder Zeile des Romans spricht eine Leere und Sinnfreiheit, die keine Antwort finden, weil es schlichtweg keine geben kann.

Fazit: kein idyllisch-romantisches Paris, wie man es auch Hollywoodfilmen kennt, sondern ein anderes, leeres Paris, zu dem man am Ende fast erleichtert wieder „Adieu“ sagen möchte-

[Ren Jie · Rating 5 out of 5]

On Leave looks into the French Algerian War from 1954 to 1962 through a unique perspective: here, we are not in the thick of the battlefield as in the case of many other war novels; rather, we are on leave in Paris with 3 soldiers. The result is a poignant, nearly irreverent exploration of the tragedy of alienation due to war and the deep scars it leaves on the dissatisfied young men who realise that their homeland is no longer their home. On Leave is concise but deeply haunting, as it indicts society for sending men to a conflict it couldn't care less about. An excellent and thought provoking read.

[Anka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zurecht fast vergessen

[Carloesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sembra di moda (dopo il “caso Stoner”) tentare di riscoprire libri dimenticati, romanzi che quando uscirono passarono inosservati o quasi, per restituire loro la visibilità che meritano. Anche questo “La Licenza” di Daniel Anselme, pur non avendomi colpito come il libro di Williams, in fondo merita di essere letto, o riletto, a distanza di molti anni.

Forse quando fu scritto (1957) la ferita al cuore della Francia portata dalla Guerra d’Algeria era troppo aperta perché fosse apprezzato per quel che realmente valeva. Il conflitto nel libro in realtà rimane sullo sfondo. Ma l’orrore della guerra è presente e vivo, senza alcun bisogno di essere raccontato, nella mente dei tre soldati che trascorrono a Parigi una manciata di giorni sotto Natale in attesa di ritornare al fronte.
I loro problemi personali (familiari, sentimentali, ideologici, sociali) si diluiscono di fronte alla consapevolezza di non potere essere compresi appieno da chi non sta vivendo la ferita della propria pelle.
Una città, un intero Paese, le loro stesse famiglie, che non riescono a compenetrarsi con il loro malessere (l’elemento che solo può invece cementare la loro strana amicizia) facendoli sentire come un corpo estraneo. Ma un senso di piena consapevolezza dell’inutilità di qualsiasi loro gesto, di assoluta impotenza, di vuoto incolmabile, viene totalmente a galla nell’ultima serata a Parigi, nel loro girovagare senza meta in attesa di ricongiungersi con i loro commilitoni nella notte, quando tutti gli altri treni “normali” sono partiti, alla Gare de Lyon.

E così, nelle ultime pagine, una generazione viene rimandata mestamente al macello, quasi di nascosto, come per vergogna o solo per indifferenza, in una notte piovigginosa d’inverno, e fatta risalire sui vagoni della tradotta sotto gli occhi vigili della polizia militare, mentre batte i pugni sulle fiancate del convoglio scandendo le parole “Congedo! Congedo! Congedo!”

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this as a Goodreads Giveaway. While I found this book extremely sad and depressing it gives the American reader a very unique view of how soldiers in another country (France) were treated when they came home from an unpopular war. These young men were as our Vietnam Vets were treated. A difficult read because you want these young men to be understood. They have given up their lives for their country more so than if they had been killed. They come home completely changed while "home", friends and family continue on their unbroken path. There is no understanding of these young men and no one even tries. It seems that they must go back to the war in order to avoid the pain of what could have been. I am very glad to have read this for the perspective.

[Eric Jolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believed that I would find this novel interesting as someone who enjoys historical fiction. I was hoping to learn a bit more about the French war in Algiers. Not a bit of history that I remember as familiar with as an American.

Instead, this was a book about conscripts who came back to Paris on leave and spend the time acting as zombies. The author was successful in portraying these conscripts as victims of a war they didn’t want to be in.

This book just wasn’t really my taste. I don’t feel like I learned much - and would suspect soldiers would have a hard time assimilating back into ordinary life on leave. This didn’t achieve my hopes.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novel in translation about the French soldier-conscript's experience in Algiers. It takes place entirely in France while a trio of unlikely friends who served together are on leave. Hence the title. I'm sure this was meant to say something and people were meant to feel something, but mostly it was just a slog. I saw a mention comparing it to the American experience in Vietnam. If you are used to reading about Vietnam, this will bore you to tears and beyond. I feel like I gained a little insight, but not much for the time investment. And it's even pretty short...

[Carter Mize · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the core of this book is a potent message about alienation and the social destruction of late imperialism, but it's stuck underneath a romantic portrayal of Paris that I couldn't entirely connect with.

[Josh Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

You will like this if you enjoyed Erich Maria Remarque's "The Road Back." Lacks the brutality, but stands up well.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good book about a war I know nothing about. Well written, and written very near to the time of the Algerian war.

[peyton!! · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’ve found with most of the books i read for courses that i don’t enjoy them, but that’s not to say that i don’t think this is an important book to read!

[Nicholas Alford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. Did I like it because I looked cultured on the bus? Perhaps.

[Graeme Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very poignant. A few days leave for soldiers in Paris during the Algerian War. Beautifully written. War wasting the lives of young people.

[Alia Hakki · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’m not above admitting that french-algerian humor may be lost on me

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly remarkable novel about three soldiers on leave in Paris in the middle of the Algerian War. Written in 1957 it describes a sequence of disillusioned but intense experiences in a prose that is simultaneously hallucinatory and crisp. This is almost a perfect novel and one that will surely linger long in my memory. Each episode and every scene is absolutely correct in its place. Anselme's writing style is like a cross between the styles of Camus and Simenon, and the result isn't a mess, as a blending of two such incompatibles ought to be, but a melodic, philosophical and yet streetwise concoction that flows along at a heady pace. Too contained to be described as a picaresque, the novel nonetheless progresses from one rejected 'lesson' to another, as the three soldiers fail to readjust to the life they once knew. This is an angry, sensitive, enthralling, disturbing, political fantasia that never ceases to be brutally and beautifully real.

[Jake Bechtel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I agree that the characters didn't have a chance to really develop, but I think that was the point Anselme was, perhaps, trying to make. Soldiers at wartime don't have time to stop and ponder a lot of the existential dilemmas we would like for them to explore. On top of that, a soldier only has a few days of leave before they are thrust back into foreign territory and world foreign to the average citizen. So, for me, this book was perfect, from beginning to end.

The train scene in the last few pages was spot on for how the rest of the book ebbed and flowed. We finally have this one emotional moment between father and son and, naturally, the soldier does not want it to end, but at the same time is outwardly expressing his desire to not have this emotional moment because he, in my opinion, has so many internal walls set up against any perceived weaknesses that could distract him from his duty. ("'Dad! You shouldn't have come. Look, nobody comes. You're the only one.' He took his kit bags and put his arm around his father." [p.192]).

My absolute favorite scene is when everyone is at dinner. I am reminded so much of Daisy's boyfriend, Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby, in Luc. To me he is such an arrogant ass. What confuses me is how Anselme interprets Luc's obnoxious, know-it-all, poor timing rants about why the war shouldn't be happening as 'eloquence'. (p. 104) I don't see eloquence in him at all. He pissed me off throughout this entire chapter. Then, rightly so, and steaming with awkwardness "the meal died away like a fire smothered in ashes." (p. 110) I love this line. It was a perfect way to describe the nature of Luc and his ability to make everyone around him feel stupid and want to crawl into a corner until everything literally burned away.

My favorite moment from this scene, and what sums up everything that Luc doesn't understand or want to see, is when Valette finally lets loose a torrent of emotions and attempts to make Luc understand that it will take more than broad, ambiguous change to prevent wars from continuing to break out and that war isn't just some far away idealism that people enjoy protesting within the safety of their own borders. He says, "What wil they have got out of it if things go on at this rate? ... Maybe a motor scooter from the bonus, if they save it up. But what else? What will they get out of it apart from a motor scooter? What will they bring back in their heads? In their hearts? All our youth, all our lives are being wasted away." (p.116) I love this quote because it defines what every soldier understands to be the truth of war, whether in the US Army in 2014, or the Foreign Legion in the 20th century: that no one can truly empathize with men who have been in war. The true devastation is not on the battlefield after everyone goes home. True devastation lives in the mind of every man and woman who has fought for their country's freedom.

That is what I liked so much about this book. It communicated such a delicate idea in a swift and exacting manner.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in France in 1957, as the war in Algeria was escalating, On Leave attracted very little notice and few reviews. It has not been re-published since, perhaps because of a general feeling in the country that it is a subject best left uncovered, as it was both an unpopular engagement and a deeply traumatic one for the many young conscripts who fought in it. We have to thank David Bellos for this new translation and Penguin Classics for bringing the novel back into the public eye and for reminding us of this largely forgotten war.
Very little has been written about the conflict in Algeria, which makes this book even more welcome. It describes the wanderings through Paris of three soldiers back home on leave. They feel dislocated and uncertain, cast adrift among a civilian population who don’t understand, and don’t wish to talk about, the situation in Algeria. The war that has robbed them of “the best years of their lives” is not discussed, and far from welcoming them home as heroes, or even trying to understand what they have been experiencing and going through, their friends and families seem to want to avoid the whole subject. Once their lonely and unsatisfactory leave is over, they reluctantly return to their duties, feeling as lost and bereft as when they arrived home.
This is a sad and moving short novel about the conflict in Algeria, written whilst it was still in progress and the outcome as yet unknown, which gives it a striking immediacy. Officially it wasn’t even a “war” but a police operation to put down some disturbances. Over one and a half million young men were forced to do at least part of their military service in Algeria and they became very much a lost generation. Anselme said that he wrote the book because the young men who fought there had nobody to speak for them. It’s not a book about the war itself but about the effect it has on the conscripts forced to fight it, exemplified here by the three men on leave.
This is a compelling and moving novel, and one that resonates today with the ambivalence often felt towards those who have fought in more recent unpopular wars such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The plight of servicemen and women who fight in these wars seems to me to be particularly poignant, and Anselme here captures their feeling of alienation particularly well. It’s not a great novel by any standards, but it’s very readable and leaves a lingering feeling of sadness. David Bellos’ excellent introduction is both informative and in fact essential to give the background to the book and without it the reader would be hard-pressed to make much sense of what it all means. All in all, I was delighted to discover this forgotten classic and hope that it gains a new and wide readership. It certainly deserves to.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sentence from the introduction sums up the book mostly: "This spare and forceful novel speaks of the moral and human isolation of soldiers obliged to fight an unpopular war, not when they are in the field, but when they are back home." I think I expected more from it after read the Sunday NY Times Book Review of it. I think "spare" is accurate. But spare doesn't necessarily preclude depth, and I looked for more depth, more reflection from the characters given their interaction with Parisians and Parisian life while on leave from the French-Algerian War. Nonetheless, this is a timely read in our era. There's a provocative unwinding discussion on the length of war on page 151 that remains relevant today - "No, chum, what lies in store for men our age is thirty years of war, maybe twenty-five if we're lucky. Why should it stop? For starters we're going to reconquer Morocco and Tunisia... Believe you me, Valette, there is no earthly reason why it ever should stop... We can afford it." The existential despair of the potential for wars unending comes across forcefully in this work. A few lines like "The meal died away like a fire smothered in ashes" and "In that instant he was Jean Valette's brother. The cry came from both their hearts, and he didn't know which of them had spoken." leaves haunting appeals and rich descriptions for the reader. Overall, recommend this book.

[Garryvivianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apparently little was written about France's war against Algeria. And even then, this did not start as a "war". This book was written in 1957, then disappeared, belief being that it was best left alone, as this was not a popular conflict & very traumatic for the young soldiers who had to fight in this battle.

Daniel Anselme has brought this story back. This story is of 3 solders who go home on leave, and the anxieties, the loneliness they experience. They never speak of the conflict they are in (over one & a half million young men were forced to do their military duty in Algeria.) They just feel like they have given up most of their lives to this, that they have been robbed of the best years of their lives. Nobody discusses this war with them, nobody cares to know how they feel. I would think that this is exactly what most of the soldiers who fought in Vietnam felt.

It was somewhat hard reading, somewhat sad. They just go about drinking, smoking cigarettes, trying to meet up with family, a friend, only to experience more unsatisfactory feelings.

The book has an introduction that explains the conflict between France & Algeria. That was pretty interesting.

[Dominic Olofsson-Tuisku · Rating 4 out of 5]

As others have stated, the book is somewhat pointless, it has very little to say outwardly. It is detached and several pages are inconsequential. In fact the entire story might be inconsequential. Very little can be garnered from it.

Yet it is just that which I believe to be the point of the book, the story. It follows the disillusionment of soldiers. The struggle to adjust back to civilian life. To relate to the banalities and insignificance of life. Most of what transpires is of little to no consequence. I view that as being the main point of the book. An attempt, which might've failed to have been properly communicated to the reader, but still an attempt nonetheless at portraying the disconnect and whiplash of civilian life when returning home from war.

One of the best books I've read in a while.

[Gail Ofterdinger-Ledgister · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was easy for me to relate to the premise for this short novel. I am the daughter of a man who was taken from his parent's home at age 18 and shipped to the South Pacific during WWII and found his adulthood amid the shocking horrors of war. This book tells of three servicemen who return home for a week's leave and the disfunctional relationships and abhorrent treatment they are subjected to from their families and countrymen. I saw this shameful treatment of our Vietnam Vets in my youth. Apathy is not an answer. When will it end? My thanks to the author, the translation and Goodreads for a complimentary copy of this work.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an easily satisfying book, especially after very positive review in NY Times. Very little fiction has been written about the French war in Algeria, either at the time or later. This book, which follows three soldiers on leave in Paris before they must return to Algeria, has a sparse and unfinished quality. In some ways very effective, in some ways frustrating. But their grief and anguish - and alienation - is well conveyed.

[Andy Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one who loves Paris and who has been there very recently on leave from operations in Africa, this little-known masterpiece struck just about every cord in the symphonic dictionary.

The description of the 3 soldiers' last day of leave resonates with me so clearly and stirs emotions that are impossible to explain to anyone who has not felt the torment of leaving the safety of a known and cherished life to return to the uncertainty of war.