March 1993: Joaquim, twenty, debarks in Sarajevo in the midst of the siege, armed only with his camera. He is vaguely seeking to flee his own childhood and to confront death. Death that recently took his little sister, Viviane, who was worn down from atoning for a powerful family taboo with anorexia. Thanks to the people he meets and the strength of the bonds he forges in life-or-death situations, Joaquim reacquires a certain pleasure in being alive.

Summer 2017: Joaquim, now a war photographer, learns that his father has died and that he is obliged to go back to the family apartment he fled more than twenty years before. In the short time it takes to travel from Paris to Rouen, memories of his bourgeois, seemingly flawless family – wrapped tightly around their secret – come rushing back to him. In counterpoint, he relives those months in Sarajevo that allowed him to free himself from the grip of the past and to reinvent his life. But can you really free yourself from your family’s burden? In the end of the day, what does it cost to leave things unspoken?

A novel that intertwines the character’s private life with currents events, and explores how individuals can construct their own relationship to life, despite the weight of family secrets.

Through the story of Joaquim and his sister, Viviane, Ingrid Thobois delivers a powerful novel that is both intimate and open to the world, one that masterfully intertwines a journey through the hellish streets of Sarajevo and an immersion in deep, dark family secrets. This is what happens when outer explosions become the – liberating? – echo of inner disasters...