“There is the story, certainly, that Aux replis offers: the exile of a Viennese student in Free France, at the beginning of the war, in a small imaginary town in the south of France. And his effort to blend into the landscape, despite the subtle and devious games of oppression.
But above all, there is what this story is about, the desperate search for a place to live that is more than a shelter: a place to be. Hence this question that could be formulated as follows: “do I have a place to be?”, which exceeds the historical circumstance. Also the worried and disconcerted narrator, looking for a support in what offers itself in him and around him, is close to us. All the more so as Reiss’ writing, whose vocation is to reveal the intimate and secret life of beings, retains us at every moment in its intensity.”
—Jean-Pierre Siméon