In her memoirs, Gisèle Pelicot speaks very personally for the first time about the affair that bears her name. It ends on a surprisingly positive note for the victim.
“I always set the breakfast table the evening before.” With this sentence begins Gisèle Pelicot’s book “A Hymn to Life”, which will be published this Tuesday in 22 languages. The sentence sounds banal, but the author knows why she serves the plates and jam in the evening: “As if I could get through the night that has always scared me.”
Years of drugged rape are behind her, the 50 perpetrators and her ex-husband are in prison. But the fear no longer leaves the 73-year-old French woman with the rusty brown page boy hairstyle. She doesn’t touch sleeping pills. Impossible, after all the horror nights she endured while she was put to sleep. “Sleep and death are one and the same,” notes Gisèle Pelicot, who was assisted by the well-known Parisian freelance journalist Judith Perrignon when writing the story.