Come What May

“We don’t choose—we just walk along the path laid out for us, and we always reach what we are.”

Maybe Iren and Georges didn’t know what they were, but their love formed by itself in a Paris suburb—shaped by the image of Rudolph Valentino and the atmosphere of French silent cinema, where both of them worked: he as a carpenter, she as a seamstress. And from her work grew an uneasy friendship with two wealthy residents of Saint-Maur—and the three friends, almost simultaneously, gave birth. The fates of the four children forever became intertwined in the tapestry of French history.

Arlène dreamed of becoming an engineer—at a time when a woman engineer was unthinkable, and everyone she shared her plans with felt it was their duty to tell her about it.

Daniel dreamed of a military career. The twins, Marie and Thomas—the artist and the poet—wanted to do art. Their dreams, one way or another, came true, and even death didn’t separate any of them from their dream. But death separated them from each other for many years…

For his debut novel “The Club of Incorrigible Optimists,” the French writer and screenwriter Jean-Michel Guenassia received the Goncourt Prize in 2009. “Whatever Will Be” is his new epic—a grand saga against the backdrop of a turbulent panorama of French history from the 1920s to the 1960s. This text dazzles brilliantly—war, love, reckless faith, eternal hatred, regrets and self-deception, catastrophes and missed opportunities, hopes and rebirth. And even though each hero’s path is set, the choice still remains with them.

Jean-Michel Guenassia
À DIEU VAT
Copyright © Éditions Albin Michel – Paris, 2023
© R. K. Genkina, translation, 2025
Russian-language edition, design.
LLC “Publishing House AZBUKA,” 2025
Publishing House Azbuka®