« He thought his place was not there. And was not here either. »
They were called « les tirailleurs sénégalais » (the Senegalese Tirailleurs). Amadou Lo, 20, is a tirailleur no more : the First World War has ended and he has been demobilized. And he never was a Senegalese.
He hopes he will soon be back home in Guinea where, he believes, his family is waiting for him. Unfortunately, the medical officer who saved his life has another plan for him because he is secretely attracted by him : he wants his sweet and obedient Amadou to become his chauffeur. The young black boy finds himself forced to live in a small rural town deep in the Franche Comté region and there nobody has ever seen a black man before. A new battle begins for Amadou.
In his new powerful and sensitive novel, Antoine Rault confronts the reader with a complex and cruel reality of our history. The question at the heart of the story is : how much the way we look at each other is dependent on the society and the culture we grow in.