In 1919, in a small town in the province of Berry, France, under the crushing heat of summer heat wave, a war hero is being held prisoner in an abandoned barracks. In front of the door to his prison, a mangy dog barks night and day. Miles from where he is being held, in the French countryside, a young extraordinarily intelligent woman works the land the land, waiting and hoping. A judge whose principles have been sorely shaken by the war is travelling to an unknown location to sort out certain affairs of which it is better not to speak. Three characters. In their midst, a dog who holds the key both to their destinies and to this intriguing plot. Full of poetry and life, The Red Collar is at once a delightly simple narrative about the human spirit and a profound work about loyalty and love.
Author
Jean-Christophe Rufin is a French doctor and novelist. He is the president of Action Against Hunger and one of the founders of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without borders). He was Ambassador of France in Senegal from 2007 to June 2010. Rufin was born in Bourges, Cher in 1952. An only child, he was raised by his grandparents, because his father had left the family and his mother worked in Paris. His grandfather, a doctor and member of the French Resistance during World War II, had been imprisoned for two years at Buchenwald. In 1977, after medical school, Rufin went to Tunisia as a volunteer doctor. He led his first humanitarian mission in Eritrea,where he met Azeb, who became his second wife. A graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Political Sciences) in 1986, he became advisor to the Secretary of State for Human Rights and published his first book, Le Piège humanitaire (The Humanitarian Trap), an essay on the political stakes of humanitarian action. As a doctor, he has led numerous missions in eastern Africa and Latin America. He is former vice-president of Médecins Sans Frontières and former president of the non-governmental organization Action Against Hunger.
