"A work of melancholic beauty . . . Sincere, shattering, magnificent." -- L'Express

In the stillness of his Paris apartment, Jean Daragane has built a life of total solitude. Then a surprising phone call shatters the silence of an unusually hot September, and the threatening voice on the other end of the line leaves Daragane wary but irresistibly curious. Almost at once, he finds himself entangled with a shady gambler and a beautiful, fragile young woman, who draw Daragane into the mystery of a decades-old murder. The investigation will force him to confront the memory of a trauma he had all but buried. This masterly novel penetrates the deepest enigmas of identity and compels us to ask whether we ever know who we truly are.

"Moody . . . Lyrical . . . A pleasure." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A writer unlike any other and a worthy recipient of the Nobel." -- Wall Street Journal