SOURCE: "Seeking Fiancé's Fate, and Finding Bigger Issues," in The New York Times, September 21, 1993, p. C17.

In the following review, Kakutani praises the clear language and philosophical themes of Japrisot's historical wartime thriller A Very Long Engagement.

The event is horrific: in World War I, five wounded French soldiers, their arms tied behind their backs, are marched by their own troops through the trenches to the edge of no man's land. There they are abandoned in the snow to die in the crossfire with German troops. All five have been court-martialed and condemned to death for self-inflicted wounds.

This chilling story, which forms the core of Sébastien Japrisot's riveting new novel, is reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's 1957 movie Paths of Glory (in which three French soldiers are tried and executed for cowardice in the line of duty), and A Very Long Engagement shares that film's concern with...