For the first time, he found himself alone at the farm, with no sound whatever from the livestock, nor from anyone else, not the least sign of life. And yet, within these walls, life had always won through.

‘An outstanding, big, compassionate novel' Le Figaro

1999. As France prepares to see in a new millennium, the country is battered by apocalyptic storms. But holed up on the farm where he and his three sisters grew up, Alexandre seems less afraid of the weather than of the police turning up. Alone in the darkness, he reflects on the end of a rural way of life he once thought could never change. And his thoughts return to the baking hot summer of 1976, when he met Constanze, an environmental activist who fell for the beauty of the countryside, and was prepared to use any means to save it.

Serge Joncour’s impassioned, ambitious novel charts three decades of political, social, and environmental upheaval through the lives of a French farming family, as the delicate bond between the human and natural worlds threatens to snap.

‘An outstanding, big, compassionate novel on the rural world from the 1960s to the dawn of the year 2000 … By telling the story of days gone by, Joncour makes us reflect on those yet to come’ Le Figaro

‘Sweeping and seamlessly paced’ Le Monde

Serge Joncour is a French novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Paris in 1961 and studied Philosophy at university before deciding to become a writer. His 2016 novel Repose-toi sur moi won the Prix Interallié and was published in English in March 2022 under the name Lean on Me.

Louise Rogers Lalaurie is a translator from the French and the author of Matisse: The Books. Her translations have been shortlisted for the CWA Daggers and Best Translated Book Awards.