During the economic crisis of 2009, Florence Aubenas (b. 1961)—a well-known reporter and journalist kidnapped in 2005 while covering the Iraq war and held captive for five months—decided to take an interest in the living and working conditions of those French people directly affected by financial precariousness. She concealed her true identity, moved to Caen in Normandy, and joined a temp agency to find work. Between February and July 2009, she worked as a cleaner for several companies, including the ferries that shuttle between Caen-Ouistreham and Portsmouth in the UK. Determined to make a living from odd jobs like many impoverished French people, Aubenas finally delivers this text written in the vein of New Journalism, somewhere between a documentary and an autobiographical account. Behind the testimony of her personal experience and the informative aspect of this story, Aubenas also paints portraits of wonderful women grappling with everyday problems and difficult, humiliating working conditions. But she also describes their friendship and struggle, their differences and their inextinguishable desire to exist. Le Quai de Ouistreham is a veritable plunge into contemporary France, a book as social as it is political, as tough as it is humane.

When it was published in 2010, Le Quai de Ouistreham was a huge popular and critical success, winning numerous literary awards including the Prix Joseph Kessel. The book was adapted for the screen in 2022 by Emmanuel Carrère, starring Juliette Binoche as Florence Aubenas.