“The Lovers of Free France,” by Jean-Yves Pitoun: three hearts in the war

Review A realistic fiction that skillfully mixes small and large history, taking the reader alongside the defenders of Free France ★★★☆☆

By Dominique Nora

Published on July 27, 2025 at 2:00 p.m.

Resistance fighters in an undetermined location, during the summer of 1944, during the Second World War. — Resistance fighters in an undetermined location during the summer of 1944, during the Second World War. AFP

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Jean-Yves Pitoun had only a vague memory of the Sunday conversations when, at the age of 5, he heard his father Robert and his former comrades discussing their Resistance at the Café des Sports in Pau after the rugby match. Prison attacks, railway sabotage, clandestine passages to Spain of English airmen who had fallen in the occupied zone, evocations of missing comrades...

It was only after the death of Robert, a Jew from the mountains of Kabylie who enlisted at the age of 21 to finally reach the France he dreamed of, that Jean-Yves reconstructed – and fictionalized – his father's war. "I built the story from the fragments of memories he had shared with me, and the characters who regularly came up in their discussions," the author confides. His gripping tale features the heroic and romantic trio that Robert…