As a dilettante, Gérard Besnier has been in turn a mechanic (deuchiste), a carpenter (cabinetmaker), a librarian (municipal), a professor of literature (agrégé), a translator (Vincenzo Sorrentino, Éloge de l’abandon, Le Pommier, 2016; Umberto Eco, L’homme qui fait rougir ma mère, afterword to Cocaïne de Pitigrilli, Séguier, 2018), or an activist in associations (jazz, detective fiction, cinema)...). This is his first novel.