Far from the madding crowd

“It was the African night – cool, velvety, calm, and immense – that André Reilly, formerly Speaker of the Senate, had come to find. And that night took possession of him, leading him down the silver metal steps of the plane until he touched the dark earth he would never again leave.”

In his fifth novel, doubtless the most personal, Valérie Giscard d’Estaing introduces a man far from the madding crowd. A man who leaves behind the corridors of power to find himself. A novel that evokes themes of desire for escape, solitude and regret.