The Acacia : a novel
(Book)

Translation of: L'Acacia.

This novel is about war. In fact, it is about two wars, the two world wars. Much of it is autobiographical, with Simon himself being the key character in the World War II story and his father being the key character in the World War I story. The novel consists of 12 chapters, each with a date, either a specific date (i.e. day, month, year) or a more general date (i.e. year or range of years). We actually start off with 1919, i.e. after World War I. Three women and a young boy are travelling around ruined France, looking for something. Simon gives a wonderful picture of France just after World War I, a country in ruins, completely devastated with few facilities and transport networks destroyed. We soon learn that the group consists of a widow, her sisters-in-law and the widow's son. They are looking for the grave of the widow's late husband, killed in the war. The young boy is Simon himself, with his mother and his aunts, who actually did go looking for the grave of Simon's father (this was confirmed by Simon in an interview with Marianne Alphant, a journalist for La Libération). They find the grave from a description they have been given. Simon's father and another French officer are buried in a grave with German soldiers, as they were killed in a fight with the Germans but the French, in retreat, had no time to recover the bodies.

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