The Glorious Years Books in Order

The Glorious Years is a family saga, but it moves with the energy of a thriller. The books follow the Pelletier family as the postwar world opens up around them, and as old habits, hidden crimes, and political tensions refuse to stay buried. In English, the series begins with The Great World and continues with The Silence and the Rage. Rather than centering on a single hero, Lemaitre lets several members of the family pull the story in different directions at once.

At the center of the saga is Louis Pelletier, a self-made soap manufacturer based in Beirut, along with his wife and children. In The Great World, the family starts to scatter. Jean, the eldest son, is weak, secretive, and more dangerous than he first appears. François heads to Paris and drifts into journalism through a brutal murder case. Étienne goes to Saigon, where love, colonial politics, and financial corruption close in around him. Hélène, the youngest, is smart, restless, and determined to make room for herself in a world that keeps underestimating women.

The setting does a lot of the heavy lifting. Beirut, Paris, and Saigon are not just stops on a map. They show the reach of French money, ambition, and power in the late 1940s, along with the damage that power leaves behind. By the time The Silence and the Rage picks up in 1952, much of the family is back on French soil, but nobody has found peace. Jean is trapped in a sour marriage and hiding a terrible secret. François is caught between work and desire. Hélène tries to build a career in journalism and becomes entangled in a major industrial scandal. Louis remains in Beirut, a reminder that the family's roots and responsibilities are still split across countries.

This is not a cozy family chronicle.

Lemaitre uses the pleasures of serial storytelling on purpose. He likes cliffhangers, sudden reversals, overheard information, bad decisions, and the feeling that one person's private mess can spill into another person's life without warning. That keeps the books lively even when they are handling larger subjects like the postwar boom, colonial war, social change, and the limits placed on women. The title promises prosperity, but these novels are not nostalgic about the 1950s. They keep asking who benefits, who gets pushed aside, and what kind of rot can hide inside a success story.

Readers who enjoy big casts, shifting locations, and history told through family trouble will probably click with this series quickly. It has romance, crime, politics, business, and plenty of secrets, yet it stays readable because each thread has a clear human stake. Start with The Great World for the full family setup, then move into The Silence and the Rage to see how those fractures deepen once the boom years are underway.