Through seven beautifully written stories, Jean-Christophe Rufin takes us far, far away, as each new happening at a different location in the world, but also because each evokes a difficult problem which it is hard to return. The colors are varied. Fun in "French passion": a young Kyrgyz, daughter of a high official who denies him nothing demolishes everything in his Paris hotel room, because then no one understands that she has learned a very pure French and literary! Poignant in "wardrobe": a man piously maintains the remote jacket that his father returned from the camps. Touching in "the betrothed of Lourenço Marques" forty years earlier engaged couples parted in that place where they intended to make a living. The young woman did not want to influence the virtuoso career that awaited the man she loved. Mysterious "night guard" when a young intern will certify the death of an old man hospitalized for twelve years. The fall is always unexpected, the masterly construction, finely identified characters. I really liked.