The Unforeseen

de Christian Oster

The unnamed narrator claims that he lives with a constant low-level cold, and that he inevitably infects every woman with whom he is in a relationship. He loves his partner, Laure, who has, for the past year, proven impervious to infection. As the two set off in their car for a friend's birthday party on the distant island of Braz, Laure is seized with cold symptoms. It shocks her, and the resulting chain of events, closely observed from the narrator's perspective, makes up the rest of the book.