A heartbreaking debut novel about loss and rebuilding, inspired by the author’s own story, where silence becomes a language, where exile is just another form of return, where each secret revealed hides another, even heavier one.

1952, Mondovi, Algeria. Ten-month-old Anna and her slightly older sister Lucie are taken in by their grandparents after their mother’s unexplained disappearance. Thirty years later, she reappears, like a ghost, in Anna’s life. But can you really find a mother when you’ve grown up surrounded by silence and lies?

2020, Paris. Anna faces a new bereavement: that of Simon, her ex-husband and father of her children. Around her, Bastien, Laura, and Manon, her now-adult children, try to overcome their grief, each in their own way.

Between forbidden letters, the secrets of an Algerian childhood torn apart by war, and the unspoken words of a broken family, Anna must face a question that gnaws at her: what if those who are absent are more alive than those who are alive?

A poignant novel, part quest for identity, part family saga, where history and personal stories, laughter and tears, cries and silences, illness intertwine. A dive into the meanders of memory, where each truth revealed hides another, and where love, despite everything, remains the only thread that connects generations.

Marie Paule Istria has had several lives, between Algeria, where she spent her childhood, and France, the country where she went into exile at the age of 8, driven out by war. Guided by an insatiable curiosity about others, this lawyer by training has dabbled in everything and has never stopped building bridges between worlds and people: she organizes classical concerts, performs at the Avignon Festival, works in government ministries, and has created her own consulting firm to support organizations in projects promoting social innovation and quality of life at work.