L Eau Rouge (French Edition)

Rights sold to: Vietnam (Nha Nam)

At the end of her life, Laurence Bertilleux starts to loose her head. Her daughters, looking over her, listen to her delirium. They manage to catch and recognise some of the words she utters - Lân, Chaudoc, Coincoin. Moulin... They know that Chaudoc for instance, is the name of a place where their mother stayed during the war of Indochina, before they were born. A few days before her death, Laurence manages to escape, and finds the strength to go to the airport, where she intends to take a plane for the Guyana. She is caught at the last minute and brought back home, where she lets herself die, taking her story with her.
It is this story - the secret life that Laurence lead in Indochina - that is told in Pascale Roze's new novel, the most Romanesque of her books since Le Chasseur Zéro, which won her the Goncourt prize.
Why Indochina? Why choose this country, life amongst the military, when she was but a young twenty-five year old woman that nothing had prepared for such adventures? Why then this hurried return to France a few years later? Roze's novel answers these intriguing questions in her deeply affecting style. The mysterious words pronounced by Laurence on her death bed become familiar. In each of them, we come to recognise a nickname, the evocation of a loved one, a passion, a young woman's dream.

Pascale Roze was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1996 for her first novel, Le Chasseur Zéro. Her latest novel, Un homme sans larmes, was published by Stock in 2005.