Winner of the French Academy's Grand Prix du Roman. "Michon's prose tends to slow down in order to oblige you to hear its rhythms and also to see and touch and smell what is happening beneath it."-"Harper's Magazine" "He was not tall, unobtrusive, but he held your attention by his feverish silence, his dark cheer, his alternately arrogant and oblique manner-grim, you would call it. At least tha...