Esther, a French Jew who flees for Jerusalem with her mother just after Italy's occupation of a small section of south-east France ended during World War II; and Nejma, a young Arab orphaned and unable to return to the ancient city of her birth, Akka, after the Israeli declaration of statehood.

In the year 1944 in a mountainous area on the French-Italian border Esther and her mother and all the Jews in the village of Saint-Martin must cross from France to Italy to avoid the SS.

[1] After the war, she and her mother, Elizabeth, begin their long journey to France, to the sailing ship Sette Fratelli[2] which will take them to Palestine.

When Esther finally arrives in Jerusalem, she briefly meets and exchanges names with Nejma, a Palestinian, another wanderer, one who ends up, in the summer of 1948, in the Nour Chams Refugee Camp.

Le Clézio's writing seeks by way of the sun and by way of the earth (being born and the process of death), prodding into the mystery of the origin of everything (despite not knowing the future) towards a need to forget as well as a need to remember (without these needs nothing is repairable)[4]