Emanuel Bove's first novel, My Friends, relates the story of Victor Baton, a wounded war veteran trying to reestablish his prewar lifestyle but avoid work. Living in a run-down boardinghouse, Baton spends his days searching working-class Paris for the mod
Summoned home to Egypt after a long European debauch (disguised as “study”), our hero Teymour—in the opening line of A Splendid Conspiracy—is feeling “as unlucky as a flea on a bald man’s head.” Poor Teymour sits forlorn in a provincial caf�
