We are in Algeria, in a small, nameless village, a battered village. The war, stretching from the mountains to the sea, cannot alter the beauty of land and sky, the light falling on the graveyard, the silence of a proud and impoverished people. Ceaselessly, on foot and on horseback, the narrator travels about a land to which he is rapidly becoming attached. During his excursions through a landscape that stimulates and fascinates him, he gives way to an anguished meditation on fate, questioning himself about good and evil, the degradation and corruption of men, the absurdity of war. Day by day, his sense of observation grows more acute, and to keep from giving in to the interior panic that threatens him, he studies attentively his fellow soldiers, the inhabitants, especially the women, and among them, the beautiful and affecting Kheira. As he feels within him the upwelling of a primordial wildness, he chooses to bury himself in solitude. But will he be able to avoid confronting the wild beast in its lair?
[adapted from the cover of the original Gallimard edition]
