Annabelle Lengronne

When ten-year-old Birahima’s mother dies, he leaves his native village in Guinea, accompanied by the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by rebels and forced into military service. Birahima becomes a child-soldier. Fighting in a chaotic civil war alongside many other boys, Birahima sees death, torture, dismemberment and madness but somehow manages to retain his own sanity.

Sprite, a 20-year-old young adult, returns to Chelles after a breakup. To pay for his driver’s license and please his parents, he joins Allo Nettoyo, a night-time cleaning start-up in the Paris suburbs. Unable to get around without a permit, he adopts the "baise-en-ville" technique—taught by his driving instructor—which involves spending the night at girls' places of girls he meets through a dating app. Sprite struggles with this new approach to seduction.

An aspiring author looking to get more out of life takes up a writing residency and finds herself in the sort of romantic entanglements that could come from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.