I wrote the prologue to Ashby in Algiers, a few days before my arrest. “Ashby” for me is a book of compromise, pacification, farewell to what was for me then the most “pure”, the most “normal” in my past life, farewell to traditional literature, to the charm of Anglo-Saxon romance, to its secrets , detachment from reality, elegance and artificiality. But under this game of reconciliation with what I then considered the best, a powerful revolt of “Tombs for 500,000 soldiers” was already germinating and ready to spill out, fueled by what had been hidden in me for a very long time, in all that wild and “adult” , which I did not dare admit even to myself, this crude barbaric beauty lurking in the depths of my past.

Pierre Guyotat