A Very Long Engagement

“Riveting...A fierce elliptical novel that''s both a gripping psychological thriller and highly moving meditation on the emotional consequence of war.” ― The New York Times In January 1917 five wounded French soldiers hands bound before them are brought to the front at Picardy by their own troops forced to climb from the trenches onto the narrow strip of no-man''s-land that separates the French and German armies and left to die in the crossfire.Their brutal punishment has been kept secret for over two years when Mathilde Donnay a young wheelchair-bound woman from a small town in the South begins a relentless quest to find out whether her fiance officially killed in the line of duty might still be alive.The fiercely independent and determined Mathilde combs the country for information about the other four soldiers: *A farmer from the Dordogne*A former carpenter*A Parisian trade unionist*A street hustler from MarseillesAs she uncovers more about their lives an elaborate web of deception and coincidence emerges. Struggling against all reason and counsel Mathilde carries her search to its end and in discovering what happened to each of the five men Mathilde also begins to understand the horrors–and the acts of kindness–brought about by war.A runaway bestseller the winner of the Prix Interallie prize and a major motion picture A Very Long Engagement is an engrossing mystery a playful study of the different ways one story is told and a moving and incisive portrait of life in France during and after the First World War. Praise for A Very Long Engagement:“A kind of latter-day War and Peace...This is a book that is many things: a war story a story of official corruption an idyll of young summer love and a rich and most original panorama of French men and women living in peace and robbed of it.” ―Richard Eder Los Angeles Book Review