Clandestine

Clandestin (2003) is a love story confined to a single night and the time it takes to cross a railway platform. On that platform, a woman — a high-ranking civil servant bound for a brilliant career, partnered with an ambitious man — crosses paths with a stranger who has neither papers nor a home, a migrant the police are waiting for at the end of the platform. Between these two people whom everything sets apart, a bond at once carnal and fraternal arises: in the span of a single encounter, each recognizes a part of themselves in the other. In a spare prose taut with ellipses, Éliette Abécassis explores the borders of intimacy and identity, the vertigo of desire, and the way a single meeting can shake a destiny that seemed already written. A brief, deeply moving novel about exile, love and freedom, Clandestin was named to the first Goncourt Prize shortlist.