by Sebastien Japrisot · Penguin · tapa blanda · ISBN 9780452272972
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«A Very Long Engagement» is the mystery and historical romance novel by Sébastien Japrisot, published by Plume in 1994 in paperback (336 pages, in English).
During the First World War, five wounded French soldiers are left to their fate in no man's land as punishment. Years later, Mathilde Donnay, a young woman unable to walk since childhood, undertakes a stubborn investigation to find out whether her fiancé, officially declared dead, is still alive. Her search takes her across France following the traces of the five men, amid lies, coincidences and secrets that reveal the harshness of war and the small acts of kindness it also left behind.
Work originally published in French as «Un long dimanche de fiançailles» (1991), translated into English by Linda Coverdale. Winner of the 1991 Prix Interallié.
Recommended for readers of historical and romantic fiction with intrigue, especially those seeking a European wartime setting with investigation and mystery.
Sébastien Japrisot was a French author, screenwriter and film director. His pseudonym was an anagram of Jean-Baptiste Rossi, his real name. Renowned for subverting the rules of the crime genre, Japrisot broke down the established formulas "into their component pieces to re-combine them in original and paradoxical ways." Some critics argue that though Japrisot's work may lack the explicit experimental element present in the novels of some of his contemporaries, it shows influences of structuralist theories and the unorthodox techniques of the New Novelists.
