Adorable Clio

In the summer of wartime France, a traveler drives from Melun toward Provins, passing through villages, forests, military posts, and roads crowded with the quiet machinery of conflict. After encountering soldiers and units from across the world, he finds unexpected relief in a landscape and a people that feel unmistakably French. The familiar becomes almost dreamlike: sleepy passengers, startled pedestrians, abandoned crops, white châteaux, and a plaster nymph whose laundry is washed by an old woman.

With wit, tenderness, and an eye for the absurd, this reflective journey transforms ordinary details into vivid impressions. The narrator observes war not only through its armies and defenses, but through weather, food, provincial customs, fatigue, and fleeting human gestures. Richly atmospheric and lightly comic, the book offers a thoughtful portrait of France during the First World War, where danger and beauty coexist along every road.