“A feverish narrative, disturbingly direct”

Mario, a 35-year-old gay actor, knows that he doesn’t have long to live. For five years, he has been surviving himself. For five years, the virus has schooled him in fear. Mario lies in the prison of his room and gives himself failing grades for his life—an F for his lack of success, and F for his pathological need for intimacy, and F for his neurotic lack of independence. Locked within him is resentment toward his mother, the lifelong yearning for a father, and a pimply-faced kid who cowers and refuses to grow up. Mario stumbles through the wilderness of men and waits for the call. He’s learned his lesson and endures the unendurable. In a unique, staccato style, Mario Wirz tells the desperate story of a man obsessed with his memories. For as long as he can hold out against the inevitable, he spins a feverish narrative that exposes his voracious will to live.

“Maybe my story is a rumor that this night is spreading like rat poison. Or an unlikely tale that someone has heard from someone else. Or a movie filled with unspeakable stereotypes on a late-late show…”

About the Translator, Alfred G. Meyer

The translator, Alfred G. Meyer (1920-1998), received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1950 and taught political science at the University of Michigan from 1966 to 1990. He was a noted authority on Marxism, Leninism, and the Soviet political system, and the author of a number of respected works in the fields of Russian and East European studies and communist political theory.