He has long conversations with Absentia, his cheerful goldfish, who swims around and around its bowl at the precise, harmonious and reassuring speed of 17 laps a minute.

He himself lives in a small, one-bedroom apartment.

A Scrabble champion, he practices and plays every day. Which has had a certain effect on his brain and his relationship to words.

His parents are respectful, not close, but slightly worried about the solitude he seems to cling to.

He reassures them, insisting that he’s not alone, because he has Absentia.

Everything gets complicated when Mona Lisa shows up in his living room one morning.

Absurd, funny, light-hearted. As in Martin Martin and Les Petites Rébellions, J.-P. Brouillaud recounts the tiny, surrealist saga of an apartment-bound hero.