In the summer of 1943, in a small village in southern France that has been turned into a ghetto for Jews, the teenage Esther discovers what it means to be Jewish in wartime and experiences fear, death, and humiliation. After the end of the war, together with her mother, she boards an overcrowded ship bound for the newly established state of Israel, where she will discover religion and the power of prayer. Upon arrival, she will fleetingly meet, as if in a dream, Nejma, a girl her age who, as a Palestinian, is forced to leave her homeland and take the path of exile to a refugee camp. Esther and Nejma, the Jew and the Palestinian, will never meet again. They will have exchanged only a glance, but each, in her own exile, will never stop thinking of the other.

With skillful and poetic writing - the narrative alternates between Esther and Nejma and from the first person to the third - Nobel laureate Le Clézio, in this book, considered one of his best, tells a simple and human story, yet manages to deeply move his reader.