The great swindle
By: Pierre Lemaitre ; translated from the French by Frank Wynne
Contributors: Wynne, Frank, translator
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Translated from: fre
Translation of: Au revoir là-haut
Number of pages: 461
ISBN-13: 9780857053244; 9780857053251; 9781848665804
Subjects: World War, 1914-1918; Swindlers and swindling; Wounds and injuries; Fiction; Influence; Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.); Face
Work titles: Au revoir là-haut
Description: "The year is 1918, the war on the Western Front all but over. An ambitious officer, Lieutenant Henry D'Aulnay-Pradelle, sends two soldiers over the top and then surreptitiously shoots them in the back to incite his men to attack the German lines. When another of D'Aulnay-Pradelle's soldiers, Albert Maillard, reaches the bodies and discovers how they died, the lieutenant shoves him into a shell hole to silence him. Albert is rescued by fellow soldier, the artist Edouard Péricourt, who takes a bullet in the face. The war ends and both men recover, but Edouard is permanently disfigured, and fakes his death to prevent his family from seeing him as a cripple. In gratitude for Edouard's rescue, Albert becomes the injured man's companion and caregiver. Finding that the postwar gratitude for the soldiers' service is nothing more than lip-service to an empty idea, the two men scramble to survive, ultimately devising a scam to take money for never-to-be-built war memorials from small towns. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Pradelle has married Edouard's sister Madeline and is running a scam of his own that involves the exhumation of war victims. In this sorrowful, heart-searching novel, the interwoven lives of these three men create a tapestry of the human condition as seen through the lens of war, revealing brutality and compassion, heroism and cowardice, in equal measure."--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
The Dagger Awards : International Dagger - for Crime Fiction translated into English and published in the UK, Winner 2016
Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2013.