The year is 1967. We find ourselves in the southern French port town of Port-de-Bouc on a fine September day. A ceremonial maritime pine tree is being planted in the town square. The guest of honor planting this tree is Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who, six years prior, became the first human to journey into outer space. In 1967, Port-de-Bouc is a stronghold of the French Communist Party, and the tree Gagarin plants there—solemnly dubbed l’arbre de l’amitié entre les peuples [tree of friendship between peoples]—possesses a powerful symbolism. It represents a global (socialist) humanity at a time when, thanks precisely to space flights such as Gagarin’s, humankind gains a newfound vision of itself as inhabitants of a precious, blue planet floating in space. Just a few months later, with Gagarin's tree but a sapling, the events of May 1968—inspired in part by such visions—will momentarily bring capitalism to a halt in France. With orbital satellites making their groundbreaking revolutions around the Earth, political revolution— quintessentially French—is once again in the air.

We find the odd relic of Gagarin's tree half a century later, in a novel written by Jean Rolin, an author whose youth was profoundly marked by the fervor of May 1968. In Les événements [The Events] (2015), Rolin's depiction of the future is not unlike that which we find in a host of recent French novels.