On Leave

Product Description

'Paris only likes its soldiers when they're parading tamely . . . it doesn't want to see them when they're close up'

Three soldiers are on leave in Paris. As they make their way through the city, drinking, gambling and raging against a savage war they're forced to fight in a faraway place, they come to realize they are strangers in their own country. On Leave, published in 1957 as France's engagement in Algeria became ever more bloody, vividly describes the shame, isolation and terror felt by men returning from an unpopular war.

'Superb, as important as it is outstanding.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

'A rare find . . . captures with great precision the sense that all soldiers must feel on returning from the front: that their homeland is no longer home.' Andrew Hussey, Literary Review

Translated by David Bellos