A French intelligence officer, Assem, is tasked with tracking down a former member of the U.S. Special Forces suspected of drug trafficking during the War in Afghanistan. En route to Beirut he shares a night with Miriam, an Iraqi archaeologist, who is in a race against time to save ancient artefacts across the Middle East from the terrorist group ISIS. Punctuating these two storylines are vignettes from the bellicose past, all turning points in world history, each showing a will to continue in the face of defeat.

A timeless story between foundational tale and myth When Salina dies, it falls to her youngest son to tell her story, a story of violence and suffering, vengeance and passion. Exiled three times, the first time as a new-born abandoned outside a village by a mysterious horseman, Salina was taken in and raised by a clan that only ever saw her as a stranger and an enemy to be defeated. Three times a mother, her children born from strife, Salina never knew love, and revenge became her reason to live. For her to gain admittance to the cemetery, to a place of peace at last, Salina's son must face up and tell the tale of Salina's ordeals-her rape the most harrowing-in minute detail. He has no choice but to give voice to all the hardship that for years fed into Salina's rage. With this short novel set in an ancestral world, Laurent Gaude explores a narrative space where time flows to rhythmic rituals, where fate blurs to legend, and secrets become myth.