Libanese-born and naturalized Canadian, Wajdi Mouawad is the author of The blood of promises, a tetralogy (or quartet) dedicated to memory, of which this is the second piece. Twin brothers, Jeanne and Simon, two modern young men who live Canada, undertake a long journey towards the mystery of their origins following their mother’s death. It all begins with the reading of her will: a stubborn and enigmatic silence had accompanied her in the last years of her life. She held within herself the inexpressible. Now she has left a letter for each of the young men: one for the father they believed to be dead, the other for the brother whose existence they ignored.
The story takes on the style of an investigation, a mystery to be solved in a distant land, in the midst of civil war.
The pièce was adapted for the splendid film Incendies by Denis Villeneuve.