A Certain Monsieur Piekielny

Paul Hansen is serving a two-year sentence in a provincial prison in Montreal. It’s gloomy and breathes with moisture—it seems alive to the prisoner. Now Paul’s life is an endless world of dampness, cruelty, despair, and reflection. To pass the long hours, he endlessly recalls the past: his pastor father, a movie-loving mother, his wife, his dog, and a prestigious job in the apartment building “Excelsior,” where he spent more than a quarter of a century. What, then, is the story of his life and what chain of events led him to commit the crime? “Not all people live the same” — an incredibly beautiful, melancholy novel about happiness that has gone away and opportunities that have been irreversibly lost.