Pierre and Luce

Romain Rolland's Pierre and Luce is a brief, aching wartime love story set in Paris during the bitter winter and spring of 1918, when fear, darkness, and air raids seem to suspend the city in time. In a crowded subway, eighteen-year-old Pierre Aubier, burdened by dread, military obligation, and the suffocating convictions of his family, catches sight of a mysterious girl and is suddenly awakened to beauty and hope. When panic breaks out, their hands meet, and that wordless touch becomes the seed of a love that gives his life new meaning. As Pierre struggles with the loneliness of a generation cut off by war, religion, and patriotic certainty, he finds in Luce a fragile refuge from the madness around them. Their shy, playful meetings in Paris and the Luxembourg Gardens lead to a first kiss and the discovery of "a little bit of happiness." Yet their tenderness is shadowed by separation, and they cling to stolen hours—walking, talking, sheltering in churches, and teasing one another—while bombs, alarms, and history press in. Tender, luminous, and doomed by circumstance, the novel captures first love as an act of resistance against war's brutal absurdity. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.