1948, still a difficult year, but the war already seems far away and the world continues its mad march towards the “Trente Glorieuses”, those thirty years of prosperity considered as a golden age in France. Le Grand Monde (published in 2022) follows the destiny of the Pelletiers, a family of industrialists settled in Beirut, Lebanon. There are Louis, the father who brilliantly manages the soap factory, Angèle his devoted wife, Jean the incapable eldest son and his wife Geneviève, François who moves to Paris to work as a journalist, Etienne who leaves for Indochina in pursuit of a passionate love, and Hélène who goes to Paris to study. Away from each other, they are soon caught up in a family secret that shakes their relationship and sounds like a summons and a calling.

The novel is a tremendous family epic which, from Beirut to Paris and Saigon, weaves the threads of each of its characters in many different stories that intertwine and overlap. We come across a criminal case, trafficking of all kinds, the violence of colonization, the war that has already begun in Vietnam, stories of irrepressible love and a whole gallery of main and secondary characters, each as lively and colorful as the next.

As it is often the case with Pierre Lemaître, the small story joins the big one, and the reader is plunged into an era described with meticulousness in a great family story built like an adventure novel. An undisputed master of the popular novel genre in France, Pierre Lemaître was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2013 and has since continued to enthrall audiences and critics with exhilarating and well-rounded novels.

We read this book in the spring of 2023.