The Seven Fears stand for the seven lives of the adventurous Babour Horn, the young hero of Laurent Maréchaux’s first novel, largely autobiographical, whose journey through life unfolds like a parable of the fall of Western values. His journey begins in a Madrid arena, with a brief attempt to become a torero. After a painful stay in the Parisian jails, his hasty wedding is wrecked by his activities with the local mafia of Genoa. Babour’s gangster career is quickly interrupted by a formative experience in the forests of North America, where other delusions await him. Hungry for a new cause to embrace, he ends up in the Afghan desert, like a modern Rimbaud, where he witnesses the prelude to what will burst into an international conflict. His return to civilization is marked by a new start in a Babylonian Paris, where he embraces the lifestyle of a depraved advertising executive, until boredom eventually leads him to the redemptory waters of the Pacific Ocean.

A coming-of-age tale, The Seven Fears is above all the story of a struggle, where the hero’s greatest challenge is to remain faithful to his ideals.