Paris, 1959. As dusk settles over the immigrant quarter, 12-year-old Michel Marini amateur photographer and compulsive reader is drawn to the hum of the local bistro. From his usual position at the football table, he has a vantage point on a grown-up world of rock 'n' roll and of the Algerian War. But as the sun sinks and the plastic players spin, Michel's concentration is not on the game, but on the huddle of men gathered in the shadows of a back room. Past the bar, behind a partly drawn curtain, a group of eastern European men gather, where under a cirrus of smoke and over the squares of...