When Velibor Čolić first wandered the streets of Rennes, it was 1992 and he was 28 years old. A soldier who was forcibly conscripted, he had fled the horrors of war in his country, Bosnia. He is a poet, he says, that will save him. His exile becomes a book, his words a mixture of dark poetry and gentle irony in the mouth of Jean-Quentin Châtelain, directed by Maya Bösch.

Upon arriving in France, he confesses to knowing only three words: Jean, Paul and Sartre. But he will learn, willingly or not, the language of his new country, locking up his memories in his mother tongue. For his words will be his guide through the labyrinth of indifference he must now navigate. In his room in the reception centre, he writes poems and lists of things, faces and places to forget. He gets lost, gets beaten up, gets drunk, collapses, gets up again.

A few years later, he publishes Manuel d'exil - comment réussir son exil en trente-cinq leçons, in which he tells his story, goes back over his mental and physical wandering, and exposes his soberly distanced lucidity on the person he has become and to whom he cannot get used: a faceless exile trapped in the confines of his own body and in the streets of Western Europe.

Maya Bösch hears this voice written on the uncertain paths of exile. She recognises something of the actor Jean-Quentin Châtelain in this anchored phrasing, full of desire and life. The three of them – the author and the actor with their robust, stocky bodies and the director – put the novel to the test on stage, travelling together along migratory routes that lead nowhere, except perhaps to the self.