"The passing of carefree" Kessel proposes a novel in Paris in the thirties with the main heroine a German-born singer who flees the Nazi terror, working to survive in the cabarets of Montmartre. The narrator befriends this fragile and lost woman who tells him his story, he then sees his slow physical decline, aptly describing the plight of this beautiful woman who sinks into alcohol, drugs and prostitution love for her husband imprisoned in Nazi jails. This prescient novel written in 1936 was one of the first to denounce the concentration camps that flourished beyond the Rhine and seemed moved by the overly carefree French before the rise of Nazi Germany. With its unique style, Kessel still offers a moving novel about friendship, love and the complexity of feelings.
