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Starred Review This remarkable first novel, a prizewinner in the author's native France, ushers the reader back to the devastating days of World War I. Dugain evokes time, place, and character with light but indelible brushstrokes, visualizing, as briefly as a dream but as resonantly as a memory, the horrible atmosphere within the French hospitals used for depositing the grievously wounded coming in from the front. Before the outbreak of war, Lieutenant Fournier was a railway engineer who had begun a new job in Paris only months before his induction. No sooner was he dispatched to the front than he was seriously wounded while on a reconnaissance mission. Fournier is taken by ambulance back to Paris, where he spends the remaining years of the war in a ward reserved for officers. He must now cope with the fact that a large portion of his face is gone and--despite attempted surgical corrections--gone forever. Dugain's significant debut, then, is not a war novel about trenches and strategy but one about disfigurement and the psychological as well as physical pain associated with "getting back into the swing of normal life." This tough but elegant novel need not have been a single page longer, for in its brevity, it speaks volumes about survival in wartime. Brad Hooper
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Review

"A novel of breathtaking simplicity and power . . . the complex tragedies and joys of suffering human beings." -- The Times on Saturday

"An unforgettable, short work with echoes of Birdsong and Pat Barker." -- The Bookseller