Las vidas ajenas

Daniel has long been lost in his drug addiction and discouragement. Claude still believes that by working hard you can achieve something. The two live in Brussels and are dedicated to emptying houses of deceased people, most of them without relatives or from homes so poor that nobody wants to take charge of the move. Kasongo was someone in his country, but here he is lame, poor and has lost his lucky charm. Chantal is an exhausted single mother, burdened with responsibilities, fed up with her precarious life and the lack of a future, also for her little girl. Until Daniel finds in a house that they have to empty, for once the house of a rich man, some compromising photos related to Belgium's colonial past. He then begins a necessarily botched blackmail attempt in which the participants are amateurs and have to learn everything as they go along; for example, where do you buy a gun? The blackmailed -the banker Lebeaux and his handyman Degand-, on the other hand, know how to function perfectly in the world of finance and crime, which, after all, are not usually so far apart. A novel that narrates the meeting of two worlds that usually never touch and investigates the violent past -and present- on which our precarious well-being is based.