Gustaf Sobin

The Fly-Truffler

Out of the pungent soil and wind-struck orchards of Provence, this enchanting love story will make you believe, if you ever doubted it, in the power of love and the lengths people will go to keep it alive.

Philippe Cabassac has fly-truffled—the art of stalking the flies that lay their eggs directly over the truffles—every winter since childhood on his family estate in Provence. Since the death of his young wife, Julieta, the truffles have come to represent something far more than a delicacy for Cabassac's palate: they trigger an evocative sequence of dream visions in which he and his lost wife enter, on winter nights, a state of intimate and prolonged communion. As Cabassac becomes increasingly involved in his dream life with Julieta, he loses his hold on his teaching obligations, on managing his estate, on his waking life altogether. Set against the fading of traditional Provencal culture and an incandescent Mediterranean landscape, The Fly- Truffler celebrates a love that, by its very ardor, outlasts a lifetime. Reading group guide included.

"[O]ne of those rare, haunting novels that you consume in a single sitting... "—The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, 7 February 2000

"Imbibe this lush, luminous book as if it were a drug."—Albert Mobilio, author of The Geographics)

"[A]n erotic, telluric novel suffused on every page with the fragrances of truffles, almonds peaches, earth, and sex."—Eliot Weinberger, acclaimed translator of Octavio Paz and other authors)

"[T]he experience it gives a reader is long and intense."—Michael Ignatieff, author of The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience

"[M]akes you want to catch the first plane to the south of France and head for the nearest oak forest.—Washington Post Book World

"An oddly gentle, wintry little novel, with a gorgeous primeval landscape."—Los Angeles Times Book Review)