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Adassa
A young French soldier in 1888 West Africa has an affair with a Gbeto warrior recruit. Pregnant, she escapes into slavery; he is spared, stripped of his honor, while his friend is executed for the same crime.
Forty-four years later their granddaughter sails to Paris, seeking revenge on the soldier—now an old man. She is surprised to find Europe in the grip of rage itself. A land buckling under war, panic, ignorance, death; the machines of murder—a continent even more depraved than her own, its inhabitants more confused than herself.
Simone De Beauvoir and budding philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre—teachers, barely more than her age—take her on as a study. They cross paths with Picasso, Dali, Breton, Josephine Baker, even Hitler.
This love story fascinates, the characters penetrate, revealing hidden sides of a dangerous time. Insights arise from the Lost Generation, the Napoleonic Codes, Surrealism, Existentialism, Berlin’s acceptance of Nazism. Philosophy, art, travel, war, revenge . . . this history is all very personal. History and odd adventure. And a conclusion that can never be forgotten.
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