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Shadow Lives

Pierre Kretz

Published Friday 9 November 2018

All the versions of this article: [Deutsch] [English] [français]

Ernest Schmitt was born before WWI into a small Catholic peasant family, near the Swiss border. During the 30s, he became a lawyer in Strasbourg and married the daughter of his boss, a prominent member of the Protestant high society.

He will try to build his life as a man during a few decades deeply marked by the madness of mankind and the excesses of History.

On june 5th 1956 he disappears suddenly.

“Shadow Lives” evokes those entire generations who never really had the chance to lead their lives.


Author: A former lawyer, Pierre Kretz first came to writing through the Alsatian dialect. He is the author of novels that have been translated into German and adapted on the radio and at the theater in France and Swizterland and presented at the Avignon Festival.

Genre: Literature fiction

Number of pages: 176

Keywords: history – war – lost generations – life – time – trauma – identity – disappearance - rebirth

Audience: adult

Right Sold abroad: Germany

Extract
«Käte, do you ever have this feeling as if you were really living your own life?»
I was so surprised by the question that I had answered:
«I don’t know. Do you?»