Balco Atlantico

Jérôme Ferrari, born in 1968 in Paris, is a philosophy teacher. After teaching at the international high school in Algiers and later in Corsica, he now works in Abu Dhabi. His works are published in France by Actes Sud. For his novel "And I Left My Soul Behind," he received the Grand Prix Poncetton SGDL 2010 as well as the Prix Roman France Télévisions 2010. His novel "Sermon on the Fall of Rome" was awarded the Prix Goncourt and named one of the best books of the year by booksellers.

Once again, the Corsican village, once again the bar. From close range, two bullets are shot into the stomach of the nationalist Stéphane Campana. Clinging to his lifeless body, the young Virginie Susini weeps, having been devoted to the now-deceased man for years, to the point of sexual self-neglect. And again Hayet, along with her brother Khalet, full of dreams for a better, free life, came to Europe. Yet the indifferent course of events shatters their dreams like the promising waves crashing against the rocks of Balto Atlantico, Tangier, Morocco, writing them into the wind of history like the sea spray that knows no mercy. On the island of violence and beauty, Jérôme Ferrari brings together the hopes and fears, ideologies and dreams, longings and loneliness of the villagers, merging them into a shared fate - delivering us a novel about the power of memory, inner exile, and the strength of dreams - profoundly deep, full of empathy, and always keeping his characters close to the irrevocable laws of the world’s cycles throughout all eras. A magnificent reading experience!.