Where I Left My Soul

A devastating novel of the Algerian War, brutally relevant to current conflicts.

It is 1957, the savage Algerian War rages on. Captain Andre Degorce is reunited with Lieutenant Horace Andreani, with whom he experienced the horrors of combat and imprisonment in Vietnam. Captives now pass from Degorce's hands into Andreani's: one-time victims have become torturers. Andreani has fully embraced his new status, but Degorce has lost all sense of himself. He only finds peace when he is with Tahar, a commander in the National Liberation Army who is held in a cell that now acts as a confessional, the jailor opening up to his prisoner.

'shocking and perversely beautiful morality play' Irish Times. 'it invites questions that can have only uncomfortable answers' The Scotsman. 'the story has a doomy propulsion, with its elegant flashbacks and adumbrations, vivid, economical scene-setting, and fascinating relationships at its heart ... blackly brilliant' Guardian. 'The most powerful novel I have read this year' Michael Holroyd. 'A powerful short novel, taking us from Buchenwald and Vietnam to Algeria, and leading to the conclusion that those who suffer go on to cause most suffering' New Statesman. 'This examination of the corrosive effect of torture as practised by officers of the French army during the Algerian war is brilliantly and movingly done' Allan Massie. 'an unsparing examination of how violence begets violence' The Independent. 'As elegant as a knife blade and as deadly, this shocking and magnificent novella explores the evil men do' Irish Times. 'uncomfortable and illuminating' Financial Times.

Jerome Ferrari was born in Paris in 1968, and worked as a professor of philosophy at the international lycee in Algiers for four years before moving to Corsica, where he has been teaching since 2007. He has published three previous novels. Geoffrey Strachan is the award-winning translator of Andrei Makine.

Winner of Prix Roman France Televisions (France Televisions Novel Prize) 2010 and Prix Valery Larbaud (Valery Larbaud Prize) 2011 and Prix Initiales - Litterature Francaise (Initiales Prize for French Literature) 2011 and Grand Prix Poncetton de la SGDL (Poncetton Grand Prize of the SGDL) 2010.