Reading in French.

The summary:

Augustin remembers his childhood and youth… which were not quite like those of others. Isolated in a troglodytic manor house in Périgord, he is bound to keep a secret that weighs heavily on his family.

This secret turns out to be the fault line between two irreconcilable camps: the lasting patients (patients durables) and the honorable patients (patients honorables).

Between displayed conservatism and strategies of respectability, the ambitions of each side play out in the intimacy of bedrooms, where the body becomes a stake of power.

A novel of memory, Les patients durables explores the familial, ideological, and intimate undercurrents of an era when loving still seemed to be an act of dissidence.

The author:

Delphine Gersmann is a lawyer and writer. Her background, at the intersection of law and culture, feeds a writing style that pays close attention to the frameworks that organize lives. Formed in art history and law, she has practiced in France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, at the heart of legal systems where words bind, protect, and constrain. With this debut novel, she extends her reflective work through fiction—not to escape from reality, but to better question it.