Epic Annette: A Heroine's Tale is written in the form of an epic poem. It is also an epic literary event: a slender book of 45,000 words that describes the life of Annette de Beaumanoir, born in Brittany in 1923. She joined the French youth communist faction and the French resistance, and rescued two Jewish children inthe second world war. She subsequently trained as a neuropsychologist, fought against French colonialism in Algeria, was imprisoned by her own compatriots while pregnant with her third child, made a dramatic escape, and then worked with Ben Bella until his fall in 1965. She moved to Switzerland where she led a neuropsychology unit and thence to southern France.