The Fourth Wall

Chalandon's novel Le Quatrième Mur (The Fourth Wall) was a literary sensation when published in France in 2013, winning the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens and going on to sell almost half a million copies in France alone. The novel has been adapted for film in French in 2024, and has been translated into numerous languages. Sorj Chalandon's work more broadly has been translated into many languages, including German (DTV), Italian (Ugo Guanda) and Spanish (Seix Barral) among others.

The Fourth Wall is a stunning literary novel, informed by Chalandon's own experiences as a journalist in the Middle East. The novel is set in Beirut, in February 1982, at the outbreak of second Israeli invasion of Lebannon, and follows Georges, who has been asked by his old friend Samuel, a Greek Jewish theatre director, to help him stage a performance of Jean Anouilh's Antigone, which had previously been staged in Paris amid the Second World War. With a cast composed of those on all sides of the conflict - Palestinian, Christian, Druze, Shiite, Sunni, Chaldean or Armenian - and amid the chaos and destruction of war, Georges and Sam aim to bring them together in a form of theatrical truce for a few brief hours.