• Published in English for the first time • The fertile imagination of the creator of Aldebaran applied to Earth at the end of this century • An unusual main character, product of a world that turns the established social tropes on their heads and offers an intriguing commentary on racism and privilege • A story which raises strong ethical questions about man’s ability to coexist with nature

Paris, end of the 21st Century. Inspector Romane Pennac is the only white woman in her station. The world has suffered devastating wars and ecological disasters, and the old powers of Europe and America are now the third world. Yet it is toward the young woman, now a member of a discriminated-against minority, that a couple of devastated parents turn. A mysterious letter has just announced to them that the body of their daughter, recently deceased in New York, isn't in her coffin...