From Saint Denis to New Caledonia, Fabien Truong has composed a powerfully insightful portrait of the diversity of France’s population.

Vietnam, New Caledonia: Through two journeys like the points of a star with Saint Denis as its center, Fabien Truong revisits France’s colonial history and that history’s associated traumas. In the company of children of asphalt and immigration, he heads to verdant tropical forests in search of traces of an absent grandfather…and discovers tenderness at the heart of the world’s violence.

This book confirms the author’s talent for observation and insightful depictions of a search for one’s roots.