Résumé
In Sarah Waters's novel, The Night Watch (2006), the narrative unfolds backwards, from 1947 to 1941, so that the characters, just like the plot, are turned towards an unrecoverable past. The development of the story, however, allows readers to do precisely what the characters cannot: retrieve what they have lost and trace their steps back to the source of their traumas. The contention of this chapter is that the use of metalepsis, a figure that produces temporal destabilisations, allows for a performative experience of war-related traumas and an ethical reappraisal of the lost memories of WWII.