Trois fois dès l'aube

Two characters meet on three occasions. A man begins talking with a woman in his hotel lobby and, when she feels faint, he takes her into his room. Their conversation continues, the man opens up to her, but it does him no good. A hotel porter helps a young female guest flee in order to escape her companion, a violent and dangerous man.

Older than her, he reveals that he spent thirteen years in prison following a murder. Malcolm, the character from the first encounter, is still a child when his parents die in the fire that destroys their house. To spare him the aftermath of this tragedy and take him somewhere safe, a police inspector brings him to one of her friends.

Three nocturnal stories that end at dawn and that mark, each in its own way, a new beginning. Three facets that Alessandro Baricco brings together into a hypnotic and powerful narrative, not without elegance, and even sensuality.