A Sun for the Dying

A year before his untimely death, Jean-Claude Izzo penned his masterpiece: this dramatic story of a man's search for human intimacy. Rico has been banished to society's margins; he has neither a roof over his head nor a steady income on which to depend. When a friend and fellow vagabond dies of exposure after a night spent in the Paris metro, Rico decides to flee the northern cold for his beloved south, for Marseilles and the warmth of the Mediterranean. Diverted and hindered along the way, he suffers the vagaries of human cruelty and pettiness, and is warmed by occasional, fleeting instances of human tenderness. His return to the Mediterranean is simultaneously a homecoming and a pilgrimage in search of lost love, innocence, and humanity. From the celebrated author of the Marseilles trilogy, this is both an affecting on-the-road novel and a tender exploration of love's power both to heal and to destroy.