Bruno Doucey

Où que j’aille

January 9, 2026

Novel

300 pages

125 × 190 mm

21,90 €

978-2-4878-1720-3

How war transforms a life into destiny… The story of young Zena, resistant, rebel and free 1941-1945: a mad race through the mountains of Crete.

Spring 1941. Hitler’s airborne troops descend upon the island of Crete. While Greece has capitulated to the Nazis, the Cretans resist. And young Zena, a student in Rethymnon, knows she cannot stay in the city. She chooses to head for the mountains to rejoin her family in the highlands of the East. On the way, she meets Yorgos, a shepherd who has joined the resistance, and decides not to take up arms but to use her legs to transmit crucial information to the resistance.

She runs and runs, defying the enemy while multiplying her rage, without realizing that she is also on a journey to find herself. Wherever she goes, Zena is an arrow piercing through the night.

The author

Bruno Doucey is a novelist, poet and publisher. After directing éditions Seghers, he founded a publishing house in 2010 dedicated to defending world poetry and the militant values that drive him. For him, mountains are a place of life, whether it be the Jura where he was born in 1961, the Alps he has often traversed, or Crete where he has made his home. And he perceives literature as a journey through which we blend our cultural and human heritages and an act of resistance. His novels all feature characters who defend freedom. Où que j’aille is his second novel published by éditions Emmanuelle Collas after Indomptables (2024).

Highlights

A magnificent novel about women’s place in war, or how a young woman destined for nothing related to combat breaks free from the gender limitations imposed by society to become a resistant, a rebel, a free woman.

A mad race through the mountains of Crete between 1941 and 1945.

A linear and dynamic novel, nourished by historical facts, a page-turner.

A coming-of-age novel: how an 18-year-old girl, confronted with total conflict, commits to the resistance and, through this crisis, discovers her own identity.

Little-known facts about the Cretan resistance against the Nazis.