The 1.4 Manifesto

By Dr. Cornelis van Houte

"Between the four words of theology and the four words of administration is the full distance of what remains to be done."
When Dr. Cornelis van Houte-a sixty-four-year-old Belgian tax lawyer and amateur photographer-set out in his black BMW X5 to document the silence of the Western Front, he believed he was performing an act of "reliability of counsel" for the dead. His book, The Ground Held, was a masterpiece of elegant prose and "disciplined restraint," a meditation on the white stones of Thiepval and the geometry of European grief.

But history is not a lens choice, and the ground was never consulted on his arrangement.

Enter "The Professor," a sociologist of memory who dismantles van Houte's work with surgical precision, exposing the "colonial erasure" of 350,000 African and Caribbean soldiers who fought in the same mud but were left out of the frame.
In a story that moves between the high-speed motorways of Europe and the hushed reading rooms of the Amiens archives, two men of considerable intelligence argue over who has the right to remember the past. Yet, it is Amara, a researcher with a ledger of "Non-British Empire status" records, who finds the four words that change everything: No further action taken.

The 1.4 Manifesto is a meta-literary journey through the landscapes of the Somme and Normandy, exploring the "aestheticization of atrocity" and the systemic culpability of the archives. It is a book about a book, a critique of a life, and a reckoning with the administrative decisions that decide which names are carved in stone and which are left to the dust.

For fans of W.G. Sebald, Rachel Cusk, and post-colonial histories, this is a profound exploration of memory, privilege, and the silence that remains when the record is closed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GSHH5QC3
• ISBN13: 9798251920635
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 170 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"