Twenty years ago the author began travelling across France, avoiding major roads and soulless suburban sprawl — garish signs, prefab buildings, uniform housing estates, endless roundabouts. Instead he sought out the last remaining small shops: abandoned, silent witnesses of forgotten trades and fashions. These empty storefronts, deserted and weathered by time, became the outlines of a ghost town standing in quiet resistance to distant shopping centres, with shutters drawn, doors sealed and windows bricked up.