Used Book – Les Deux Léopards, Jacques-Pierre Amette

When Gabrielle checks into the Hôtel des deux Léopards, in a town on the Normandy coast, she doesn't know that she's about to confront her own history. As a retrospective of her work is being prepared, buried lines from the past resurface: the bombings and deadly fires of 1944, the disappearance of her best friend and her parents, her ambiguous relationship with a young man, Henry; and above all, the presence of Hans Balda, a Wehrmacht second lieutenant.

As memories unfold, the story shifts to Berlin in the early 1950s. Hans Balda becomes a psychoanalyst and succumbs to a strange love. Henry, meanwhile, becomes a prominent figure. He rebuilds the Norman towns as if performing an examination of conscience. In this slow resurrection, thirty years of French life and thirty years of Germany unfold and echo each other.

From Langrune to the Rhine Valley, from the ruins of Caen to the blockade of Berlin, Jacques-Pierre Amette plays hide-and-seek with the ghosts of our past.