Jean-Philippe Toussaint is the author of nine novels, and the winner of numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Decembre for "The Truth about Marie". His writing has been compared to the works of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Tati, the films of Jim Jarmusch, and even Charlie Chaplin. Jordan Stump is the noted translator of several modern French novelists, including novel prize winner Claude Simon, for whom his translation of Le Jardin des Plantes won the French American Foundation s Translation Prize. Warren Motte is chair of the Department of French and Italian at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he specializes in contemporary writing and focuses particularly on experimental works that challenge conventional notions of literary form. He has written several studies of contemporary French Literature, including Fables of the Novel: French Fiction Since 1990, available from Dalkey Archive Press. Translator and editor of Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature, he also edited an issue of the journal SubStance dedicated to the work of Jacques Jouet, and is a contributing editor to Context magazine.

"A charming, meandering sliver of fiction in which images and ruminations gracefully accumulate." — New York Times"Very entertaining indeed." — Kirkus Reviews