# On Leave

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/daniel-anselme/on-leave/9780141977553

![On Leave](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/daniel-anselme/on-leave_978-01-4197-755-3.jpg?v=2026-04-24%2004%3A24%3A05)

- Book: [On Leave](https://www.bookquiver.com/daniel-anselme/on-leave) ([On Leave.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/daniel-anselme/on-leave.md))
- Authors: [Daniel Anselme](https://www.bookquiver.com/daniel-anselme)
- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-01-4197-755-3
- Published: 2014-04-24
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

First published in Paris in 1957, as France's engagement in Algeria became ever more bloody, On Leave received a handful of reviews and soon disappeared from view. Through David Bellos's translation, this lost classic has been rediscovered. Spare, forceful and moving, the novel describes a week in the lives of a sergeant, a corporal and a private, home on leave in Paris. Full of sympathy and feeling, informed by the many hours Daniel Anselme spent talking to conscripts in Paris, On Leave is a timeless evocation of what the history books can never record: the shame and alienation felt by men returning home from an unpopular war.