Le berger et l'assassin

First, the splendid illustrations, showing page after page of the mountains at their most grandiose. The contemplative Régis Lejonc says in the afterword that he had never drawn the peaks, flanks and valleys of Haute-Savoie before, but Henri Meunier's text makes them obvious, as a setting and as a character. In the tradition of the great Alpine narratives, the two authors imagine a story that could not have been told anywhere else. Escaping from the fascists, a wounded "assassin" is taken in and cared for by a shepherd, hoping to cross the border via the peaks. Forced to live together, the two men converse in voice-over, watching the majesty of nature unfold before them, only to appear to the reader at the very end of the book. This harshly philosophical text is built around a historical situation that inevitably echoes current events. The mountain appears as a place of passage and encounter, a metaphysical frontier to be crossed, ultimately revealing the profound humanity that links the murderers and the shepherds in the same breath. Magnificent!