Is it possible to live without ever betraying anyone? Including yourself or those who share your life? Isn’t betrayal inevitable? Isn’t it as natural as breathing, as falling in love?   Betrayal is the key the author uses to unlock the deepest secrets of the characters portrayed in these stories. A woman refuses to summon her brother to their mother’s death bed. A teenage girl pretends not to recognize the man to whom she granted her first kiss. A woman conceives a child without telling the father. A great artist is revealed to be an utterly banal person. In each case, the narrators realize that their life has taken an unforeseen turn – and that moment of epiphany has cast their past experiences in a new light.   With luminous prose whose simplicity triggers subtle emotions in readers, journalist Agnès Gruda delivers her first work of fiction.