Before all that happened, which I will recount here, there was only happiness that needed no explanation. When asked how I was doing, I would answer: good. At that time, Gabriel met with his friends on the street and experienced his childhood like in a paradisiacal cocoon. Until his family fell apart, and almost at the same time, his small country, Burundi, had to endure unimaginable atrocities. And his mother lost her mind. Twenty years later, after fleeing with his sister to a distant, foreign France, Gabriel returns to a world he thought had long disappeared. Yet he finds something there that he believed was irretrievably lost. "Small Country" is an overwhelming book, full of horror and bliss, kindness and eternal loss - a piece of French world literature in the very best sense.