The Blockhouse

Abstract: "A young soldier, the narrator, more than forty years ago, experiences a night of fear and premonition with his comrades, deep in a casemate. A little later, he is sailing towards Norway in the midst of war, aboard a ship slowed down by a very peculiar breakdown... Then the story, five short stories, each self-contained, transports us to a fictional country that providentially replaces or superimposes itself on Normandy, at the moment when the German army is sweeping through it. Taken prisoner, our young soldier finds himself, on the other side of the Rhine, in the presence of the "father of barrels", a semi-imaginary character in whom Germany is already redeeming itself. We find her again, also humanized, in the character of a dying or already dead "doyenne" whom our young "hero" takes through a burning city, amidst the Red Army celebrating its victory and May Day with copious amounts of vodka. War has many faces..."