Description
Book SynopsisFrom the International Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor comes a searing account of a conflict that dealt a fatal blow to French colonialism.
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023
'Excoriating and profound . . . A remarkable work' - Scotsman
'Absolutely spectacular' - France Info
19 October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option – a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants – but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found.
In this gripping and shocking novel, Éric Vuillard exposes the tangled web of politicians,
Trade Review
Excoriating and profound . . . A remarkable work . . . I cannot think of an Anglophone author who writes with such polemical, poetical indignation * Scotsman *
Powerful . . . An entracingly nightmarish analysis of the First Indochina War -- Graham Robb * The Spectator *
Clever and scathing * Le Temps *
Vuillard writes into grey areas of history * New York Times *
A work of ferocious reckoning . . . chilling . . . shine[s] a hard light on figures who might otherwise disappear into the jumbled backdrop of the past * Wall Street Journal *
Absolutely spectacular * France Info *
Pages clenched like fists ready to strike. It is the eternal war of the powerful against the weak that Vuillard stages in each of his books * L'Obs *
Sparkling . . . By his pen, historical figures become beings of flesh and blood; we hear them breathe, we see them sweat * L'Histoire *
The challenge for Vuillard is to tear the rancid nostalgia for 'the good old days' of the colonies, for the chic, elegant, confident and honourable colonial France, to pieces * La Croix *
Brilliant . . . An Honourable Exit not only illuminates the machinations behind the Vietnam debacle for the French, but shows just how damaging an anachronistic hunger for domination can be. * Arts Fuse *
