Biography

Born in 1980 in Le Mans, Frédéric Gruet, Ecole Polytechnique, fed on Joseph Kessel, Romain Gary, Amin Maalouf, Victor Hugo and Joseph Conrad. He now lives and resides in Chantilly.

This is the story of a French neurologist who, after having been shipwrecked, adopts a blue parrot from a Scottish aristocrat who paints colourful camels and a jungle full of tigers, spiders and geckos.

It is the story of a general karen who does not understand his predecessors, a Thai boxer who fights for peanuts and a restaurant owner from Anvers who rides his motorbike.

It's the story of people who do not give up, of a 'madam' mother who loves peace and the daughter of a dog groomer.

This is the story of a Burmese colonel who has become a general and who gets the idea of digging a hole." (Introduction by the editor)

"This is a first novel full of characters whose fates collide in a mountain village which is in rebellion, in the middle of an Asian jungle: a young Parisian, failed journalist and biographer, a neurologist of Corsican origin, a Scottish aristocrat who paints camels, a publisher specializing in publishing memoirs, paid by the author... And also a gecko. Mostly there are a lot of silences, unspoken words, in this surprising text, realized with suspension points between paragraphs. [...]

Abrupt, ambitious, this first novel will be frustrating for some readers. The more persistent will be pleased to have read an original story - if not completely crazy." (Sophie Conrad, The World of Books, February 25, 2011)