Velvet

Soft as love. Seductive as death. Enigmatic as destiny.

The life of Jules About, a seventeen-year-old heir to a velvet factory in Amiens, changes drastically when he is recruited during World War I to establish a system of messenger pigeons in the trenches alongside his father.

Bid farewell with tears and promises from his mother, aunts, and Gin, his first love, Jules enters the battlefields, where he witnesses the ferocity and destruction that war unleashes upon men. Yet, amid this brutality, Jules discovers that dreams and hope endure, even in the darkest corners of humanity.

Through his connection with the birds and his dedication to the mission, Jules makes remarkable progress in his research on flight, finding in the pigeons a symbol of resilience and hope. Meanwhile, Gin suffers under enemy occupation, but both of them, separated by war, hold on to the hope of being
reunited one day.

Velvet is a lyrical meditation on war, youth, love, and hope that never dies, written with exquisite, evocative, and subtle prose. A book with the spirit of a haiku—fleeting, intangible, light, and beautiful.