We are démineurs. We dismantle bombs.

Ferrand Martin and his team of démineurs spend their days in the ruined fields of Zone Rouge on the periphery of Verdun, France where they clean up the artillery and explosives used in World War I. One bullet, one bit of shrapnel, one bomb at a time. The work, they say, is not measured in days, months, or years, but in generations. It’s taken a century to get this far, and it will take many more centuries to complete.

One morning, a routine call to pick up a half-buried artillery shell turns out to be much more than just a single missile: they discover a human skeleton, fully intact. Ferrand and his fellow démineurs dig deep into poisoned soil to reveal the past is rarely ever distant from the present.

This startling discovery kicks off a series of events that sees the usually desolate Zone Rouge teem with activity as academics, politicians, and locals all wrangle over the legacy of the War and what it means to remember. Zone Rouge is a brilliant reimagining of the Sisyphus myth suffused with our modern anxieties over war, climate, class, and the ghosts of our pasts.

"In the way only the best anti-war literature does, Plunkett immerses us in the lasting consequences of humanity's old, ruinous lie..." –Matt Gallagher, author of DAYBREAK