The Bay of Foxes
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
An erotic tale of passion and power and their dangerous consequences. Sheila Kohler's memoir Once We Were Sisters is now available.
In 1978, Dawit, a young, beautiful, and educated Ethiopian refugee, roams the streets of Paris. By chance, he spots the famous French author M., who at sixty is at the height of her fame. Seduced by Dawit's grace and his moving story, M. invites him to live with her. He makes himself indispensable, or so he thinks. When M. brings him to her Sardinian villa, beside the Bay of Foxes, Dawit finds love and temptation—and perfects the art of deception.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set primarily in Paris in 1978, Kohler's newest (after Children of Pithiviers) is the tale of Dawit, a beautiful, young but broke Ethiopian refugee, and M., a 60-year-old novelist who writes obsessively about her girlhood in a French African colony and her long lost Ethiopian lover. When Dawit fortuitously meets M. in a caf , the latter is overcome by his striking resemblance to her old flame, and subsequently asks Dawit to come live with her. Within days, Dawit finds himself wearing M.'s clothes, offering feedback on her manuscripts, and even pretending to be his benefactor in written and telephonic correspondence. All is well until the pair retires to M.'s Italian villa on the Cala di Volpe, the titular Bay of Foxes. There, Dawit grows restless once a slave to hunger and poverty, his improved state seems nevertheless characterized by a similar condition of bondage, something Dawit resolves to escape, whatever the cost. Set against a richly dramatic landscape and historical background, Kohler's work is rife with duplicity, jealousy, wealth, and violence, but the characters feel more like self-consciously literary creations than flesh-and-blood people. As a result, the thrills are superficial and what should shock falls flat.
