A Parisian from Kansas

This remarkably assured, accomplished, and spellbinding novel is the extraordinarily engaging story-within-a-story of the friendship between two Americans in Paris. Darren Swenson is a disaffected, world-weary HIV-positive man who believes his life worthy of a novel. Philippe Tapon is the sensitive, poetic young man who attempts to turn Darren's life story into a post-modern, self-referential novel about life and death that will do justice to his remarkable subject. Unconventional, uncompromising, and unblinkingly truthful, A Parisian from Kansas is an emotion-packed exploration of the limits of compassion and the ills of a generation. A first-rate, page-turning narrative, a dramatization of the creative process and the inherent challenges of novel writing, this story is provocative in the very best way.