We are what happens to us. We are what we want, we are what we lack. We are what those who love us or mistreat us make us. We are the place where we grew up. We are the places we have fled from and the places we have tried to reach. The protagonist-narrator ofWith rage in my bodyThe novel, by the French author Sorj Chalandon (1952), tells the story of a boy—a teenager, a young man: we see him grow up throughout the novel—who has suffered nothing but misfortune, who longed for a loving family but never had one, whom no one has ever loved, and whom many mistreat. In one instance, he is imprisoned in France. The institution's name is the House of Supervised Institution, and its official objective is to reform the inmates so they can work at sea or in the fields, but in practice, it is a hell where dehumanization and brutality prevail.