L'aventure by Pierre Veber

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L'aventure by Pierre Veber

(11 User reviews) 2085

By Anastasia Zhang Posted on Jan 17, 2026

In Category - Medieval Literature

Authors: Veber, Pierre, 1869-1942 Published By : Veber, Pierre, 1869-1942

Book Language: French

Okay, so picture this: Paris, around 1900. A perfectly respectable, slightly stuffy man named Monsieur Dutilleul discovers he can walk through walls. Not like a ghost—he’s solid, he just… phases through brick and stone. At first, it’s a fun party trick. But then he gets a terrible new boss who makes his life miserable. What do you do when you have the world’s most perfect power for revenge and mischief? That’s the delicious setup of Pierre Veber’s 'L’Aventure.' It’s a short, hilarious, and surprisingly sharp story about a mild-mannered clerk who uses his impossible ability to flip his entire life upside down. It’s less about superheroics and more about the sheer, giddy joy of getting away with it. If you’ve ever daydreamed about having a secret power to fix your problems, this book is your guilty pleasure.

File: L'aventure by Pierre Veber

Pierre Veber's L’Aventure is a little gem of French humor that feels both charmingly old-fashioned and weirdly timeless. It’s the story of an ordinary man who gets an extraordinary ability, and the chaos that follows.

The Story

Monsieur Dutilleul is a quiet, unassuming clerk in Paris. His life is a model of boring routine until, one evening, he walks straight through his bedroom wall without meaning to. After the initial shock, he practices and masters this strange talent. He uses it for small, harmless pranks, baffling his neighbors. Everything changes when a tyrannical new boss, Monsieur Lécuyer, takes over his office. Lécuyer is a bully who delights in humiliating Dutilleul. Fed up, our hero discovers the true potential of his gift. He begins a campaign of surreal revenge, haunting his boss by appearing inside his locked office, stealing documents from sealed safes, and driving the man to the brink of madness. What starts as payback spirals into a new, much more adventurous life for Dutilleul, one where walls—and social rules—no longer apply.

Why You Should Read It

This isn't a complex superhero origin. The joy is in Veber's dry, observational wit. He pokes fun at office politics, bureaucracy, and the stuffy social norms of the time. Dutilleul is a fantastic character because he’s so relatable. Who hasn't fantasized about a magic solution to a bad job? His journey from timid pushover to confident trickster is pure wish-fulfillment fun. The book moves at a breezy pace, and the scenarios Veber imagines are clever and laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a story about freedom, in the silliest and most literal sense.

Final Verdict

L’Aventure is perfect for anyone who needs a quick, clever, and utterly delightful escape. It’s for fans of light satire, classic French farce, or stories like 'The Invisible Man' but with a much sunnier disposition. If you enjoy tales where the underdog wins in the most unconventional way possible, you’ll get a huge kick out of Monsieur Dutilleul’s wall-walking antics. It’s a one-sitting read that leaves you smiling.