Lisez! icon: Search engine
Presses de la cité
EAN : 9782258206908
Shaping : EPUB3
DRM : Watermark (Tatouage numérique)
What do salmons think about?

Release date : 28/09/2023
An intense and wonderful literary novel about a neverending love.
Simon and Claude undertake a unique journey enlightened by small gestures, caring attentions, love. Simon returns, 65 years later, to Mauthausen. Feeling his final days approaching, he has decided to confide himself to his beloved wife. For three days the couple will take, together, a hard and moving trip back in time.
An intense and wonderful literary novel about a neverending love.

Simon and Claude are 86 and have loved each other since their childhood in the French village of Fougereuse. Simon has lung cancer. He has always refused to talk, even to Claude, about his experiences in the Resistance and his captivity...
An intense and wonderful literary novel about a neverending love.

Simon and Claude are 86 and have loved each other since their childhood in the French village of Fougereuse. Simon has lung cancer. He has always refused to talk, even to Claude, about his experiences in the Resistance and his captivity in a concentration camp. But one day, he asks his doctor if he is able to go for a trip to Mauthausen. The latter does not object to what may be an opportunity of remission. Although their two sons believe it is madness to do so, they leave together in their pick-up to reach Austria. They travel through France, Germany, part of Austria, and reach Mauthausen where Simon was held captive from 1943 to 1945. He never considered himself a hero. He refused the jobs he was offered at the Liberation and came back to Claude in Fougereuse.

In 1940, aged 17, he became the Colonel’s liaison officer. He was never afraid. The police officers never suspected him, the young innocent boy who got off the train and greeted them at the checkpoint. He took advantage of his travels to visit Claude, who used to be a teacher in a religious school. Finally, he was betrayed and handed over to the Gestapo who tortured and deported him.

This novel recounts in the present tense the events of the couple’s journey, the small gestures, their love, the ups and downs of Simon’s health and the three days of their stay in Mauthausen which has become both a museum and a tourist centre on the shores of the Danube.  The story constantly shifts into confidences and brief flashbacks to the dark years. He should have died a hundred times. He came back. Claude and Simon hold hands and do not let go of each other to make this journey through time. They don't hide anything from each other. Simon knew a woman deported to Mauthausen when the Americans liberated the camp. They talk about the courage to live free. About luck. Simon is tired. Claude is going to drive the pick-up on the way back, but they won’t tell their children. They are alive. They are young. The pick-up holds up. They are determined to continue the journey together as long as possible. Holding hands.
Read more
Read less
EAN : 9782258206908
Shaping : EPUB3
DRM : Watermark (Tatouage numérique)
Presses de la cité