Night Departure and No Place

the long version

Night departure relates the escape of a band of French soldiers following the murder of two German guards at a prisoner-of-war camp, and their ensuing journey, on foot and unarmed, to their native land. It is a powerfully antiheroic tale in which the escaped prisoners' irrational devotion to one another is offset by acts of petty betrayal and violence. Paranoia and hopelessness propel them along their way as often as does the desire to be free. Their leader, who is also the book's narrator, finds himself despised and mistrusted. In No Place, the same selfless and comical narrator is beaten down by the bureaucratic stupor of occupied France - more than he had been by his earlier imprisonment and escape. Freedom remains elsewhere. Little by little, Bove's hero is transformed into a vaguely odious parasite, his sense of grandeur overshadowed by a simple fear of dying.