Who hasn’t seen that documentary on gnus migrating in search of fresh pastures, forced to cross a crocodile-infested river?

The herd makes the crossing every year, not without leaving a handful of stragglers behind. It is thanks to these hapless victims, who keep the crocodiles’ hunger at bay, that the herd can forge onwards. Much, indeed, like the protagonists of this book: gnus condemned to negotiate crocodile-infested waters, never knowing if this time it is their turn to meet their doom. Many of them are adults visited by their former adolescent selves.

Glimpsed from a distance, far from their origins, the teenage years of the members of the herd are mirrored by their ultimately thwarted ambitions – a wish list, seducing a star of the silver screen - or long yearned for breakthroughs that, when they do arrive, are little more than absurd victories that heighten their nostalgia (the promotion of a humble team to the top division, the bitterness of a second-rate poet seeking to recover past glory that now lies out of reach).