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Angry, dazzling and humane, The French Art of War is the Goncourt-winning novel about the intervals of peace and the moments of unspeakable savagery in French wars spanning half the world and half a century.

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1991. A young man is mesmerised by the rolling coverage of Desert Storm. Forging sick notes to avoid work and feigning reasons to avoid his girlfriend, he gradually destroys his whole life. Then he meets Victorien Salagnon, an elderly artist and a veteran of countless wars. Together, they strike a bargain: Salagnon will teach the young man to paint and, in return, he wants his memoirs written down, a ranging, bloody life story of being a teenage résistant in Nazi-occupied France; of hunting rebels in Indochina and engaging in torture in Algeria; of the deaths that were as numberless as they were senseless; of the killing fields on which the modern world is built.

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Bold, brave, magnificent. Irish Times

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Alexis Jenni is a French novelist and biology teacher. His debut novel, The French Art of War, won the 2011 Prix Goncourt. He lives in Lyon.

Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator and writer.

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