Lorsque j'étais quelqu'un d'autre

I’ll admit, I approached *When I Was Someone Else* expecting another dry war narrative, maybe a well-researched but ultimately distant account of WWII’s horrors. Instead, I got a terrifying ride into the mind of a man who *remembers* being someone else—and worse, realizes he might’ve been the enemy. Allix’s narration is the secret weapon here. There’s no theatrical embellishment in his voice when he describes the soldier’s final moments; it’s the flat, exhausted delivery of a man who’s just watched a stranger die in his arms. That’s the kind of specificity that makes this audiobook unforgettable. Martinaud, meanwhile, shines in the quieter moments, his voice cutting through the static of Allix’s panic like a scalpel. The pacing is relentless, but in a way that mirrors the soldier’s frantic, last moments—there’s no time to recover, no breaks from the horror. That said, the book isn’t without its rough edges. Allix’s obsession with proving his past-life claims occasionally veers into self-indulgence, and by the midpoint, his insistence on the supernatural can feel like a lecture rather than a memoir. The production, while clean, could’ve benefited from subtle sound design—soldier’s cries in the distance, the echo of gunfire—to deepen the immersion. But these are minor quibbles. What lingers is the sheer audacity of Allix’s premise and the harrowing way he drags the listener into his nightmare. If you want a war story that’s more than just dates and battles, if you’re willing to question the boundaries between past and present, this is the audiobook that’ll stick with you. Just don’t listen before bed.