One day, all the adults on Earth fall one after another into a mysterious coma… Children and teenagers suddenly find themselves left to their own devices.

Léo and Marie, two sixteen-year-old high school students, assemble their friends to try and save as many babies and small children as possible and distribute food to the neighbourhood kids. Within this group of companions, now called “the Canteen”, the typical ties of teenaged love and friendship are soon magnified and deepened by their circumstances.

In a world abandoned by adults, where even the most elementary resources are running short, gangs of thugs round up the existing stocks of food and become increasingly violent. Léo’s band must learn how to fight in order to preserve the civilized values of their former lives, refusing the idea that might makes right.

Having finally defeated the ‘Spitters’, a gang installed in the supermarket, Léo and his friends must confront another enemy: the ‘Straight Men’, an organised clan which has seized control of a military armoury and holds dozens of child-soldiers as slaves.

In this situation where violence is the ultimate recourse, will the children manage to survive until the grownups wake up?

And what if they never wake up?

AWARD: Prix des Lecteurs en Seine 2017