FREE A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT PDF Sebastien Japrisot | 320 pages | 05 Jun 2003 | Vintage Publishing | 9780099449294 | English | London, United Kingdom A Very Long Engagement () - IMDb Set in France during and after World War Ithe plot revolves around the fate of five French soldiers who have been sentenced to death for shooting themselves in the hand to avoid military service. In A Very Long Engagement the men are marched to a frontline trench on the Somme, near Bouchavesnes. They are then pushed unarmed into no-man's-land between the French and German lines and abandoned to their fate. Through correspondence with the wives of the condemned men A Very Long Engagement with former military officers, as well as the placing of newspaper advertisements and the hiring of a private detective, she eventually discovers the truth about what happened. A Very Long Engagement is an A Very Long Engagement novel that exposes the cruelty and horror of trench warfareand the official lies and corruption that allowed atrocities to take place. The novel is also a detective story, as Mathilde unravels the mystery of what happened to the five men. Finally, the novel is a moving love story, which shows that love can endure even when war destroys everything else that is valuable. Jean Baptiste Rossi was born inin Marseille, France. He lives in France. Japrisot wrote and published his first novel inwhen he was eighteen years old. His first novel translated into English was The from Marseilleswhich was published in its original French in Drawing on the techniques of the police procedural novel, the story centers around a series of murders on a passenger train. In Japrisot's novel Trap for Cinderella original French edition published in ; English translation intwo young women are burned in a house fire. The survivor is disfigured beyond recognition and suffers A Very Long Engagement amnesia. The mystery develops through a complex plot and descriptions of the same events from different points of view. Japrisot's psychological mystery The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun original French edition published in ; English translation in was awarded the Prix d'Honneur. It A Very Long Engagement followed by Goodbye Friend original French edition published in ; English translation inin which a doctor returning A Very Long Engagement Vietnam is accused of murder. In One Deadly Summer original French edition published in ; English translation ina daughter, conceived through her mother's rape, vows vengeance against her father, the rapist. The A Very Long Engagement translation of The Passion of Women original French edition published in ; English translation in was also published under the title Women in Evidence. It focuses on the death of a man falsely accused of killing a child. This novel was followed by A Very Long Engagement original French publication in ; English translation ina tale of love and war, which won the literary Prix Interallia in and became a bestseller in A Very Long Engagement and A Very Long Engagement. Japrisot's also penned Rider in the Rain original French edition published in ; English translation inalong with dozens of screenplays, some of them adaptations of his own novels, including The Sleeping Car MurdersTrap for Cinderellaand One Deadly Summer Negotiations were taking place in for A Very Long Engagement movie version of A Very Long Engagementalthough Japrisot declined the invitation to write the screenplay himself. Five French soldiers are being marched to the battlefront on the Somme. They are prisoners, having been condemned to death for shooting themselves in the hand to A Very Long Engagement military service. He tells Mathilde everything he knows about what happened to the condemned men. His orders were that the men were to be thrown over the trench, with their hands tied, A Very Long Engagement the no-man's-land between the French A Very Long Engagement German trenches. He arranged for the condemned men to send letters to their loved ones. Then they were A Very Long Engagement over the trench. Esperanza does not know exactly what happened after that, since he was transferred A Very Long Engagement another regiment, but he heard that all five prisoners were killed. A Very Long Engagement wheelchair-bound Mathilde studies the information that Esperanza left her. She reads the copies he made of the men's letters and also reads a letter from Captain Favourier to Esperanza dated Sunday, January 7, which says the five men are still alive and he hopes to receive an order to bring them back at nightfall. Mathilde tries to piece the puzzle together. From Aristide Pommier she gleans some information about Manech as he was awaiting trial. She sees Esperanza again and suspects he is withholding information from her. She suspects That Man's letter is not what it appears. Mathilde writes to the wives of the dead prisoners. Conte says Tina received official notice that Common Law was killed in action January 7, Mathilde visits the bar owned by Little Louis, a friend of the Eskimo, who tells of how his friend was also declared killed in action. Louis tells of a quarrel between the Eskimo and his girlfriend Veronique Passavant, and between the Eskimo and one of his closest friends, a man known as Biscuit. Mathilde wants to believe that the Eskimo, a tough character, protected Manech and saved his life. A casualty list dated Monday, January 8,lists all five men as dead. But there is no evidence they were killed in the manner Esperanza says, and the lawyer knows that there was an official pardon for the men on January 2. Even though Pierre-Marie tries to convince Mathilde that Manech is dead, she is not convinced. She publishes an advertisement in the newspapers, asking for information. She believes that a casualty list can be altered and that at dawn on Sunday, January 7, all five men were still alive. Mathilde receives a letter from Veronique Passavant, saying that she believes the Eskimo is still alive, although she has no evidence. The mother of Urbain Chardolet tells Mathilde that when her son saw the five men lying in the snow, one or perhaps two were not the person or persons he expected to find. This gives Mathilde hope. Benjamin Gordes's wife A Very Long Engagement writes to say that Gordes was killed January 8,in a bombardment. Mathilde learns that Gordes is the man named Biscuit and that inGordes and the Eskimo quarreled over a woman. Mathilde suspects that Gordes later had some influence on his former A Very Long Engagement fate. Elodie Gordes explains what happened between herself, her husband, and Eskimo in The war was hard on Benjamin Gordes. He told his wife that if they could have another child, making six in all, he would be A Very Long Engagement from the army. But alcohol had made him impotent. Mathilde also learns from Pire, her private detective, that the five men were buried by British soldiers and then interred two months later at a cemetery in Picardy. Mathilde and Manech first met in Junewhen Mathilde was ten years old and Manech thirteen. Their love grew steadily, and Manech scratched the letters MMM in a poplar tree near the lake where they swam together. The letters stand for Manech's Marrying Mathilde. InMathilde buys the land on the shore of the lake, where her father builds her a large villa. The family makes a pilgrimage to Manech's grave. Poux is convinced Manech was killed by machine-gun fire from a German plane, although he did not witness it personally. He describes the fates of the other men and the battle that took place that weekend. He asserts A Very Long Engagement the letter That Man wrote to his wife is in code, something Mathilde has suspected. They discuss Chardolet's comment that one or possibly two of the bodies were not who he expected. Poux believes that if any of them survived, it would have been That Man. Mathilde visits the former battlefield, which is now a huge freshly mowed field. At dinner, she meets Heidi Weiss, whose brother, a German soldier, was killed at the same trench at the same time as Manech. Weiss confirms that from what she was told, Manech was killed by fire from a German plane. Mathilde also hears via a newspaper report that Tina Lombardi has been executed for killing French military officers. Mathilde receives a letter from Tina, A Very Long Engagement from Tina's prison cell. Tina explains that she killed the officers because they harmed her lover Nino. Like Mathilde, Tina had been searching for the truth of what happened to her lover. She provides information that fuels Mathilde's hope that Manech may still be alive. With more information from Weiss, Mathilde is close to solving the mystery. She cracks the code That Man used in the letter he A Very Long Engagement to his wife. She finally finds That Man in a village called Bernay. He explains everything that happened, including how he managed to survive. He helped Manech away from the battlefield and thinks there is a good chance he survived. Mathilde learns that Manech is still alive, living under the name of Jean Desrochelles. He has amnesia and can remember nothing of the war. He lives with the mother of A Very Long Engagement soldier named Jean Desrochelles, who was killed in the war. The identity discs of the two men were switched. Desrochelles's mother went along with the deception, since her real son was dead and she needed someone to care for.