What should you do when you learn that your life is going to be over by age 40? And you have three children? The narrator-author, who is still in touch with his inner child, chooses a path of imagination and mischief. When cancer blocks his future, he decides to play with time like a magician. From now on, you will call me Pépé, he tells his children. Too young to die, but not to play with life, time and reality… and to stay childlike….

Which just goes to show that the stories we make up are strong enough to compete with death.

This début novel, with its impeccable style speaks to us about families: the ones we inherit and the ones we create. Pépé’s childhood was lived under the yoke of his father’s brutality. When it is his turn to be a father, he chooses tenderness. When chaos returns, this time with the face of a deadly disease, the young father decides to fill whatever time he’s got left with the best thing life has to offer: gentleness.