Ravel was short and frail, like a jockey - or like Faulkner. He weighed so little that in 1914, when he decided to go to war, he tried to convince the military authorities that this was the ideal weight for an aviator. They refused to mobilize him into this branch of the military, just as they refused to take him into the army at all, but since he stood his ground, he was seriously assigned to an automobile platoon, a heavy truck driver. And one day a huge military truck roared along the Champs-Elysees, in the cabin of which one could see a frail figure drowned in an overly spacious blue overcoat... Jean Eshnoz (b. 1947) is one of the greatest French writers of our time, a laureate of the Goncourt Prize, a brilliant stylist, a virtuoso from literature, a recognized experimenter and a worthy successor to the best traditions of the “new novel”. The book is dedicated to the last ten years of the life of the great French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937).