Gaspard Sauvage, nicknamed ‘the Zebra’ by his wife Camille, is an eccentric provincial notary whose obsession to revive the passion and desire in his fifteen year old marriage has unforeseen consequences.


After a contrived attempt to leave his wife, the Zebra proclaims his intention to declare war against their matrimonial torpor. His strategy includes anonymous love letters, a fetishistic mania for collecting Camille’s hair and nail clippings, re-enacting moments of their amorous past, adultery and other manoeuvres.


Wounded by the Zebra’s pretended affair with a colleague, Camille decides to leave her husband. She starts a new life on her own, sharing a flat with her children and channelling her ardour into romantic pulp fiction. Suddenly, a terminal illness brings Camille and Gaspard together. But the Zebra is indefatigable and keeps on pursuing his romantic goal.


The life of this bourgeois family, set in a quiet countryside environment, is full of entertaining incidents that maintain the reader’s attention and The Zebra is also a maliciously funny and tender love story, ironic and sagacious.

‘Stupefied, Camille stepped backwards while the Zebra, in spite of the gravity of the situation, exalted at having revealed to her his clandestine doings as well as the emotions he had been striving to nourish for months. His belief in this death-haunted character of his was now rock-solid; but he owed to himself at this moment to show his hand and try to win back Camille. Sincerity is sometimes the supreme form of cunning. With the conviction of a lawyer defending his client’s head, he continued his tirade.’ p99