A writer obsessed with Hollywood is desperately seeking to get a producer interested in an enormous screenplay on the life of Herman Melville that he’s been writing. When he meets famous filmmaker Michael Cimino, director of The Deer Hunter and Heaven’s Gate, an increasingly bizarre journey through Paris, Ellis Island, and Italy ensues.

Blurring the lines between cinema and literature, this deeply original work is a true reflection about the sheer folly of our times.

Book-alike: The Nix, Nathan Hill (Vintage)

Yannick Haenel is a columnist and the author of many novels and essays. He is the editor of the avant-garde magazine Ligne de risque, which he co-founded in 1997. His novel Hold Fast Your Crown was a finalist for the Goncourt Prize and the winner of the Médicis Prize.