French actor and writer Jean Reno has presented his second book. It is a novel about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russia. The book, L’Évasion (The Evasion), addresses the issue of the deportation and forced assimilation of children during the war.
At the heart of the plot is Emma, a former masseuse recruited by the French foreign intelligence service, the Directorate-General for External Security. Working undercover, she travels to Siberia to infiltrate a so-called ‘rehabilitation camp’ for Ukrainian teenagers and document the crimes, including the forced detention and ideological indoctrination of children.
As Reno explained in an interview with the French publication Télé 7 Jours, real-life stories of abducted Ukrainian children provided the impetus for writing the novel. He said he was shocked by the scale of the crime: as of 2024, human rights activists had identified over 19,000 deported children.
The novel combines elements of a spy thriller with a documentary foundation and aims to draw the international community’s attention to the issue of Russia’s illegal deportation of Ukrainian children.