In a state of permanent tension and relieved moral paralysis, Jean-Marie Thely, an anguished bystander confined to the margins of polite society, has based the whole of his existence upon the idea that he is unlike others. He derives his singularity from his origins as an illegitimate child; bounced from one condescendingly charitable household to another only to be rejected by the bourgeois families that raised him. Restricted to an ordinary education, barred from an officer's career, he is unable to do what he wants and eventually becomes trapped in a life of utter indecision.
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A professor of literature at the ecole normale in Arras, Georges Hyvernaud was called up at the start of World War II and given the rank of lieutenant. He was captured with his unit in 1940. He was impounded in one Pomeranian "oflag," then in another; finally, on January 20, 1945, he was released and together with other former prisoners made his way across northern Germany, on foot and in cattle cars. On his person, Hyvernaud carried notebooks filled with what shortly became "La Peau et les Os," a narrative of his wartime experience.
Hyvernaud's account is of a failure of character, the...