Released in 2008 after six years of sequestration in the Colombian jungle, Ingrid Betancourt has since forgiven her jailers. The author is studying theology at Oxford today and signs this wonderful story of a couple who run up against the brutality of the Argentine dictatorship and the different choice made by the two lovers. For him, vengeance. For her, love towards and against everything.

MC: The heroine of your book has premonitory "flashes". Which sometimes helps to avoid certain dramas ...

Ingrid Betancourt: Julia sees what will happen tomorrow through her third eye. In a way, it receives calls for help from the future. Sometimes it can save lives. But above all, this gift allows him to open up to others and to reach a love that is given without expecting anything in return.

So you believe in psychics?

We have all been, one day or another, confronted with our intuition. We sense, for example, an urgency if our children need us; we turn our head just a few seconds before to avoid a drama; we sometimes get to read the thought of another or we have the same idea at the same time; we have dreams that give us answers, and so on. What is physical and rational is not enough for us.

Mentally, Julia resists violence. To infidelity too. Where does this force come from?

It feeds on certainties in the future to confront the present. It is the force of hope. She's expecting a child. She escapes, she seeks, she finds. She therefore leads a double battle: that of love and that of truth. She draws from it what she needs to build her happiness.

Today, what does this novel represent in the reconstruction of your life?

I wanted to write a novel that I would have liked to read during the holidays, lying on a deckchair by the sea. I wanted a book of escape and love, which would carry me away outside, but also far away, and that I could close with feeling satisfied to live. If I keep my bet I will have started talking about the future and not the past.

Ed. Gallimard, 19,90 €.