Sila's Fortune

Winner of the 2011 Prix RTL-Lire and the 2010 Prix Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

"Sila's Fortune is a book of our time. It consists of stories that are extraordinary, beautiful, inspiring, sad, or painful and rendered with a felicity of writing that is to be greatly admired."—Lire

"One of the jewels of this year's literary output, Sila's Fortune is an amazing immersion into the world of bling and money."—L'Express

Paris, June 1995. At an exclusive restaurant, a waiter—a young immigrant named Sila—is violently attacked by one of the wealthy diners. No one moves. Not the expensively dressed Russian couple, not the two young traders come to celebrate their first jobs on the floor. Not even the wife of the aggressor.

All actions have consequences, and the brutality, indifference, or cowardice of those present on that day at the restaurant signals the beginning of their individual undoing. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the financial crash of 2008, the crossed destinies of the witnesses weave a complex web of human tragedy across the decades.

And at the center of it all is Sila. But in a society blinded by its own greed, is his refusal to be made a victim a heroic act of defiance, or a futile last cry no one will hear?

Fabrice Humbert teaches literature in a French-German lycée near Paris. His previous novel The Origin of Violence won the first ever French Prix Orange and the Prix Renaudot for best paperback.