Pisti, 80 Rue de Belleville

A wild nocturnal frolic among the anarchists and hipsters of Paris

Elke is a young academic with a troubled past that keeps spilling onto her present. Just as she is about to leave town for a writing retreat, she meets Pisti, a charismatic, hard-boiled but luscious Hungarian left activist who runs an anarchist collective in Paris. Over one night in a Belleville apartment, old friends and new lovers discuss--and act on--polyamory, politics and the art of conversation. A wry exploration of the seductive allure of tropes and cliché in the art world and politics, Pisti is also an experiment in writing, shamelessly flirting with namedropping and appropriation. Lauren Elkin of the White Review writes: "This book is zany and provocative and really makes you feel like you're in the mix with a bunch of queer Parisian anarcho-hipsters, downing lemon hummus and radishes, oysters and anchovies, and plotting to overthrow capitalism."