Bove Emmanuel – The Coalition: After the death of her husband, Louise Aftalion arrives in Paris with her son Nicolas, twenty-three years, so that it finally finds a job. Nicolas has huge ambitions but no desire to work. Without resources apart from her husband’s inheritance, Louise plans to reconnect with her family, whom she has not seen for fifteen years and get help from them. His sister Thérèse, become a wealthy bourgeois, agrees to accommodate them some time. But Theresa has always hated her sister and she refuses to keep these idlers at home. So begins for Louise and Nicolas a slow tumble as the financial means begin to fail. They go from a furnished apartment to more and more squalid hotel rooms, provided they are given credit a few more days. They borrow money from family, friends and acquaintances, but even when famine lurks, they are unable to restrain themselves from spending it on useless things.

In his fourth novel, Bove describes with devilish precision the coalition between two people who are unable to support themselves and who refuse to see themselves as poor. A refusal of reality and social codes that will pitilessly lead to misery, hunger and death. A relentless and vertiginous novel, which reads in one go.