Description: Fiction. "Lars Gustafsson has an uncompromising vision of the utter complexity of modern life ... He loves to play with possibilities and solutions in a manner that is refreshingly affirmative" (Eric O. Johannesson, The New York Times Book Review). The subtitle of Lars Gustafsson's newest novel refers to one Erwin Caldwell, a Texas judge, who leads the reader through a wildly discursive romp that is also a meditation on the abiding presence of evil in the human heart. This roman noir involves a death by drowning of a Belgian philosopher-semanticist and an appearance by Douglas Melvin Smith, "The Most Intelligent Man in America." Lars Gustafsson is one of Sweden's leading men of letters. New Directions has published six of his novels, most recently a Tiler's Afternoon. This translation is by Tom Geddes.

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