Two stories are being told, and although centuries apart, each time a catastrophe has overwhelmed those who lived through it. Unable to see it coming, unable to pass on what was experienced. Who will tell the story? And afterwards, will things continue as before?

Le Monde moins une plunges us into these experiences at the level of bodies, fears and silences in an attempt to take up the challenge of a speech that might express life and reactivate thought. We meet historian Patrick Boucheron trying to get to grips with the great plague of the Middle Ages, neurologists trying to treat people who have lost the ability to speak, and families stunned into silence. We explore the collective dimension and the most intimate angle, the experience of a stroke in the flesh of the victim and in the minds and hearts of those by their bedside.