Orcel's novel unfolds on the Grand-Rue in Port-au-Prince, in a neighborhood known for its trade in flesh, sex, and desire, where women young and old make their living. In fragments and glimpses, readers learn about lives shaped by attachment to television images, to the romance found in novels, and to the prospect of getting out. Then an earthquake levels the capital and its brothels.

The narrator, unnamed, discovers that one of her clients is a writer and strikes a bargain with him: sex in return for setting down the stories of the friends left under the rubble. She recounts the lives of women who were lovers, friends, mothers, and daughters, in a trade that used pseudonyms and artifice to erase any sign of intimacy or inner life. What emerges is their insistence on being named in life and remembered in death.

Translated by Dize, the book mixes poetry with prose and won France's 2012 Prix Thyde Monnier.