Le Sermon sur la chute de Rome

Matthieu Antonetti and his childhood friend Libero Pintus give up their philosophy studies in Paris to take over the bar in their families’ village in Corsica. Matthieu has only ever spent holidays there; Libero, the son of Sardinian immigrants, grew up in the village. The novel also reaches back through the Antonetti family, to Matthieu’s grandfather Marcel, born on the island just after the First World War, who dreamed of an army career and became a colonial administrator in French Equatorial Africa.