What do you want to learn today? Arts Educational magazines EXPLORE A Very Long Engagement ABOUT THIS ARTICLE A Very Long Engagement Views 3,117,377 A Very Long Engagement Updated Updated A Very Long Engagement About encyclopedia.com content Introduction Print Article Author Biography Plot Summary Ad Characters Themes Style Historical Context Equinix Global Tech Trends Critical Overview Learn How IT Leaders Around the Globe Have Optimized Their Networks With Interconnection. Criticism Equinix Sources Learn More Further Reading Sébastien Japrisot YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE 1991 A Very Long Engagement Introduction War In Children's Literature Sébastien Japrisot's novel A Very Long Engagement was first All Quiet On The Western published in France in 1991 and was translated into English and Front published in New York in 1994. Set in France during and after World War I, the plot revolves around the fate of five French All Quiet On The Western Front soldiers who have been sentenced to death for shooting themselves in the hand to avoid military service. In January 1917 Good-Bye To All That the men are marched to a frontline trench on the Somme, near Settling In: The First Years Bouchavesnes. They are then pushed unarmed into no-man's- On The Western Front land between the French and German lines and abandoned to their fate. After the war, Mathilde Donnay, the fiancée of Manech, begins a long investigation into what happened to the five men. The Rush To War A Farewell To Arms She hopes against hope that her fiancé is still alive. Through correspondence with the wives of the condemned men and with former military officers, as well as the placing of newspaper advertisements and the hiring of a private detective, she eventually discovers the truth about what happened. Equinix Global Tech Trends Learn How IT Leaders Around the Globe Have Optimized Their Networks With Interconnection. A Very Long Engagement is an antiwar novel that exposes the 2021 Global Tech Trends Repo! 2020 Ignited the Digital Transformation Revolution. Is Your Business Digitally Prepared? Equinix cruelty and horror of trench warfare, and the official lies and corruption that allowed atrocities to take place. The novel is also a detective story, as Mathilde unravels the mystery of what Learn More happened to the five men. Finally, the novel is a moving love story, which shows that love can endure even when war destroys NEARBY TERMS everything else that is valuable. A Walk In The Clouds Author Biography A Walk In The Night A Walk In The Sun Jean Baptiste Rossi was born in 1931, in Marseille, France. Under the pseudonym Sébastien Japrisot, he is a mystery writer, film director, screenwriter, and translator. He lives in France. A Walk In The Woods A Walk On The Moon A Walk To Remember Japrisot wrote and published his first novel in 1950, when he was A Waltz Through The Hills eighteen years old. His first novel translated into English was The A Way Of Life 10:30 from Marseilles (1963), which was published in its original French in 1962. The English translation was later published under a different title, The Sleeping Car Murders (1997). Drawing on the techniques of the police procedural novel, the story centers around a series of murders on a passenger train. In Japrisot's novel Trap for Cinderella (original French edition published in 1964; English translation in 1964), two young women are burned in a house fire. The survivor is disfigured beyond recognition and suffers from amnesia. The mystery develops through a complex plot and descriptions of the same events from different points of view. The novel was awarded the Grand Prix de la Littérature Policiére. Japrisot's psychological mystery The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (original French edition published in 1966; English translation in 1967) was awarded the Prix d'Honneur. It was followed by Goodbye Friend (original French edition published in 1968; English translation in 1969), in which a doctor returning from Vietnam is accused of murder. In One Deadly Summer (original French edition published in 1978; English translation in 1980), a daughter, conceived through her mother's rape, vows vengeance against her father, the rapist. The English translation of The Passion of Women (original French edition published in 1986; English translation in 1990) was also published under the title Women in Evidence. It focuses on the death of a man falsely accused of killing a child. This novel was followed by A Very Long Engagement (original French publication in 1991; English translation in 1994), a tale of love and war, which won the literary Prix Interallia in 1991 and became a bestseller in France and abroad. Japrisot's also penned Rider in the Rain (original French edition published in 1992; English translation in 1999), along with dozens of screenplays, some of them adaptations of his own novels, including The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), Trap for Cinderella (1965), and One Deadly Summer (1983). Negotiations were taking place in 2002 for a movie version of A Very Long Engagement, although Japrisot declined the invitation to write the screenplay himself. Plot Summary Saturday Evening A Very Long Engagement begins in January 1917, during World War I. Five French soldiers are being marched to the battlefront on the Somme. They are prisoners, having been condemned to death for shooting themselves in the hand to avoid military service. Their names are Kléber Bouquet (Eskimo), Francis Gaignard (Six-Sous), Benoît Notre-Dame (That Man), Ange Bassignano (Common Law or Nino), and Jean Etchervery (Manech, also known as Cornflower). Bingo Crépuscule In August 1919, Manech's fiancée Mathilde visits Daniel Esperanza, a former army sergeant who is dying in a hospital. He tells Mathilde everything he knows about what happened to the condemned men. He was in charge of escorting them to the frontline trench called Bingo Crépuscule. His orders were that the men were to be thrown over the trench, with their hands tied, into the no-man's-land between the French and German trenches. He arranged for the condemned men to send letters to their loved ones. Then they were sent over the trench. Esperanza does not know exactly what happened after that, since he was transferred to another regiment, but he heard that all five prisoners were killed. The White Widow The wheelchair-bound Mathilde studies the information that Esperanza left her. She reads the copies he made of the men's letters and also reads a letter from Captain Favourier to Esperanza dated Sunday, January 7, which says the five men are still alive and he hopes to receive an order to bring them back at nightfall. Mathilde tries to piece the puzzle together. From Aristide Pommier she gleans some information about Manech as he was awaiting trial. She sees Esperanza again and suspects he is withholding information from her. She suspects That Man's letter is not what it appears. The Good Old Days Mathilde writes to the wives of the dead prisoners. She meets SixSous's wife and receives letters from the village priest in That Man's town and Madame Conte, who is Tina Lombardi's godmother. Conte says Tina received official notice that Common Law was killed in action January 7, 1917. Mathilde visits the bar owned by Little Louis, a friend of the Eskimo, who tells of how his friend was also declared killed in action. Louis tells of a quarrel between the Eskimo and his girlfriend Veronique Passavant, and between the Eskimo and one of his closest friends, a man known as Biscuit. Mathilde wants to believe that the Eskimo, a tough character, protected Manech and saved his life. Queen Victoria's Tuppence Pierre-Marie Rouviàre has at Mathilde's request discovered more information. A casualty list dated Monday, January 8, 1917, lists all five men as dead. But there is no evidence they were killed in the manner Esperanza says, and the lawyer knows that there was an official pardon for the men on January 2. Even though PierreMarie tries to convince Mathilde that Manech is dead, she is not convinced. She publishes an advertisement in the newspapers, asking for information. She believes that a casualty list can be altered and that at dawn on Sunday, January 7, all five men were still alive. The Mahogany Box Mathilde receives a letter from Veronique Passavant, saying that she believes the Eskimo is still alive, although she has no evidence. The mother of Urbain Chardolet tells Mathilde that when her son saw the five men lying in the snow, one or perhaps two were not the person or persons he expected to find. This gives Mathilde hope. Benjamin Gordes's wife Elodie writes to say that Gordes was killed January 8, 1917, in a bombardment. Mathilde learns that Gordes is the man named Biscuit and that in 1916, Gordes and the Eskimo quarreled over a woman. Mathilde suspects that Gordes later had some influence on his former friend's fate. The Woman on Loan Elodie Gordes explains what happened between herself, her husband, and Eskimo in 1916. The war was hard on Benjamin Gordes. He told his wife that if they could have another child, making six in all, he would be discharged from the army. But alcohol had made him impotent. He suggested that she allow his friend Kléber, the Eskimo, to make love to her when he came home on leave. After Elodie and Kléber did this, the two men quarreled. Mathilde also guesses that Veronique Passavant, who was living with Kléber, walked out on him because of his affair with Elodie. Mathilde also learns from Pire, her private detective, that the five men were buried by British soldiers and then interred two months later at a cemetery in Picardy. The Mimosas of Hossegor Mathilde and Manech first met in June 1910, when Mathilde was ten years old and Manech thirteen. Their love grew steadily, and Manech scratched the letters MMM in a poplar tree near the lake where they swam together. The letters stand for Manech's Marrying Mathilde. In 1921, Mathilde buys the land on the shore of the lake, where her father builds her a large villa. The family makes a pilgrimage to Manech's grave. Mathilde receives an anonymous letter saying that Célestin Poux is dead. The Terror of the Armies Poux is convinced Manech was killed by machine-gun fire from a German plane, although he did not witness it personally. He describes the fates of the other men and the battle that took place that weekend. He asserts that the letter That Man wrote to his wife is in code, something Mathilde has suspected. They discuss Chardolet's comment that one or possibly two of the bodies were not who he expected. Poux believes that if any of them survived, it would have been That Man. The Other Side of No-Man's-Land Mathilde visits the former battlefield, which is now a huge freshly mowed field. At dinner, she meets Heidi Weiss, whose brother, a German soldier, was killed at the same trench at the same time as Manech. Weiss confirms that from what she was told, Manech was killed by fire from a German plane. Mathilde also hears via a newspaper report that Tina Lombardi has been executed for killing French military officers. The Lovers of Belle de Mai Mathilde receives a letter from Tina, written from Tina's prison cell. Tina explains that she killed the officers because they harmed her lover Nino. Like Mathilde, Tina had been searching for the truth of what happened to her lover. She provides information that fuels Mathilde's hope that Manech may still be alive. The Sunflowers at the End of the World With more information from Weiss, Mathilde is close to solving the mystery. She cracks the code That Man used in the letter he wrote to his wife. She finally finds That Man in a village called Bernay. He explains everything that happened, including how he managed to survive. He helped Manech away from the battlefield and thinks there is a good chance he survived. Lieutenant-General Byng at Twilight Mathilde learns that Manech is still alive, living under the name of Jean Desrochelles. He has amnesia and can remember nothing of the war. He lives with the mother of a soldier named Jean Desrochelles, who was killed in the war. The identity discs of the two men were switched. Desrochelles's mother went along with the deception, since her real son was dead and she needed someone to care for. Mathilde meets Manech, and although he does not recognize her, there are hints their romance will flourish again. Monday Morning Ten soldiers from Newfoundland arrive at the Bingo trench on Monday, January 8, 1917. They find the five dead soldiers and bury them. Characters Ange Bassignano Ange Bassignano, also known as Common Law, is one of the five condemned French prisoners. He is twenty-six years old and handsome, but not of good character. He is regarded as sly, deceitful, and quarrelsome, and he has no occupation other than as a pimp. However, his girlfriend, the prostitute Tina Lombardi, is devoted to him. He was serving a five-year sentence for assault when he was plucked from prison and made to join the army. He is in the army for three months before he is condemned to death. Bénédicte Bénédicte is the wife of Sylvain. She helps to take care of Mathilde. Biscuit See Benjamin Gordes Kléber Bouquet Kléber Bouquet, nicknamed the Eskimo because he once went adventuring in Alaska, is the oldest of the five condemned French prisoners. He is thirty-seven and a carpenter from Paris. He was falsely accused of self-mutilation and has thus been condemned to death for something he did not do. He is close friends with Little Louis and Corporal Gordes, although he and Gordes quarrel fiercely because Kléber has an affair with Gordes's wife, which Gordes himself encouraged him to do. At Bingo, the Eskimo is killed by machine-gun fire from an enemy plane, but not before he brings the plane down with a grenade. Urbain Chardolet Urbain Chardolet is a corporal in the French army who escorts the condemned prisoners. He dies from injuries he receives in July 1918 in a battle at Champagne. Common Law See Ange Bassignano Madame Veuve Paolo Conte Madame Conte is Tina Lombardi's unofficial godmother and has known her since she was a baby. Madame Conte is just over fifty years old and not in good health. She writes to Mathilde from her home in Marseilles, telling of what she knows about Tina, whose whereabouts are unknown. She dies in 1923. Cornflower See Jean Etchervery Jean Desrochelles Jean Desrochelles is a corporal in the army who is killed at Bingo. Manech assumes Desrochelles's identity following the war. Mathieu Donnay Mathieu Donnay is Mathilde's rich father. Mathilde Donnay Mathilde Donnay was paralyzed by a fall at the age of three. She meets Manech when she is ten years old and their love blooms immediately. Mathilde comes from a wealthy family; she spends much of her time at her parents' vacation home in Capbreton, where she is cared for by Bénédicte and Sylvain. She is sixteen years old when Manech goes off to war, and seventeen when Manech faces his ordeal in no-man's-land. During the war, she teaches the children from a nearby town whose teacher has joined the army. Mathilde is also a talented artist. She paints huge canvases of flowers, which after the war are exhibited in galleries across France. She loves cats and owns six of them. After the war, Mathilde clings to the hope that Manech survived, even though all the evidence seems to suggest he did not. She is a resourceful woman and never gives up on her quest to find out what really happened that day. Like many women who lost their fiancés during World War I, Mathilde wants to marry Manech posthumously, although this feat proves impossible since Manech was too young to get married on his own. Paul Donnay Paul Donnay is Mathilde's older brother, for whom she has little affection. The Eskimo See Kléber Bouquet Daniel Esperanza Daniel Esperanza, a sergeant in the French army, was in charge of the five prisoners as they were taken to the front. He ends the war as a regimental sergeant-major and is awarded the Croix de Guerre. After the war, he contracts Spanish influenza. When ×