Léon Y Louise - Alex Capus

Leon can't forget Louise. Louise can't forget Leon. Readers of Alex Capus's beautifully imagined novel will find it impossible to forget Leon and Louise, the most enchanting couple to grace the pages of a novel in recent years.The First World War is drawing to a close. Leon Le Gall has just dropped out of high school and left his family home near Cherbourg when he meets and falls in love with Louise Janvier. Their romance will end only with Leon's death, in 1986. Yet Leon and Louise are destined to be lovers in absentia only. A series of misfortunes, the tides of world history, and the choices both make throughout their lives conspire to bring them together for brief intense moments only to keep them apart again for decades.Moving from the French Atlantic coast during the last years of World War I to Paris in the twenties, from occupied France during the Second World War to West Africa, "Leon and Louise" is a gracefully narrated story about an enduring passion. Yet Leon is alone as he battles against the abhorrent tasks imposed on him by the German SS in occupied Paris; Louise is without Leon in the wilds of Africa, where she is sent during the war and where she confronts hardships with great courage, force of will, and no small amount of humor. Capus simultaneously tells the story of a great love through the very separate lives of its protagonists and recounts the complex colorful lives of two individuals through their love for one another.