Paris, Algiers, Tel Aviv, Saint Petersburg: this is where the continuation of the Club of Incorrigible Optimists takes place. We find Michel Marini again, who is now seventeen years old and has just graduated from high school. He lingers at the "Cadran" café in Bastille, where he plays pinball, delaying the moment of his university enrollment.

His plans? To go and meet Camille, who decided to live in a kibbutz in Israel; to discover the world, equipped with his Leica; and to find Cécile, his brother Frank's beloved. An ardent communist, Frank never returned from Algeria after his desertion, preferring to dedicate his life to changing the world – even if it meant replacing the red star with a monk's robe…

Swept up in the whirlwind of their loves and secrets, the last "incorrigible optimists" all have in their hearts the great expectations of that tumultuous period. From decolonization to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, from the illusions of consumer society to mystical temptations, Jean-Michel Guenassia traces the epic of an entire generation, the touching and generous fresco of an era, the masterful narrative of our delusions.