Joseph Kessel sees every day in the streets of Montmartre a very beautiful woman, wrapped in a very mysterious opulent fur, he falls for the appearance and the look goes, he will meet, she is a singer in a cabaret, she flees Nazi Germany after her husband Michel a famous publisher of authors condemned by the new regime was arrested and put in a concentration camp, her name is Elsa Wiener, she lives in a small hotel with a Jewish boy of 12 years - Max-, infirm -it was beaten by SA while his father was abattu- him depreciated by nature, disproportionate head, high intelligence, collected by Elsa and her husband, it was in 1935 -the novel was published in 1936- who lives in Paris the last gasps of the Roaring Twenties ... Elsa will do everything to be able to give money to leave her husband from the clutches of the monsters, she will go forfeiture forfeiture, drugging, if prostitution, losing its soul, ugly, aided by intermittently Kessel which is attached to this couple, who witnessed the downward spiral in which Elsa because of the unfailing love she has for her husband is taken away -before , although she loved and respected, she constantly mistaken -... then Michel arrived in Paris And the drama found its acme. Kessel is a simple, colorful, fluid ("A small sticky day, fog and soot carrier, promised to indefinable signs." P11 "A reflection of his childhood too early thrilled bathed his face." p31 "The lights of Paris with unequal reflections playing on her smile that was becoming every moment more tender, more greedy." p191) is an outstanding storyteller who leads us where he wants, he is the narrator, he met Elsa -where at least it makes us believe in this history-it was one of the first to denounce the unjust totalitarianism of Hitler's regime. It is taking away, just and upsetting.
PS the movie Passante the carefree that takes a lot of freedom so consistent with the text of Kessel seemed old and dusty And if that was not the last film Romy Schneider -Magnificent, touching and it would fall just- in a certain forgetfulness, which is never the case of this novel.
