From the internationally acclaimed author of The Director and Measuring the World--a hilariously shrewd send-up of artistic and journalistic pretensions, told with Nabokovian wit and edgy intelligence
"A gleeful massacre of media presumptions and art-world pretensions." -The Independent (London)
"A piercing look into the art world. . . . A critique of celebrity, of fame and of the ugliness of self-promotion." -San Francisco Chronicle
Sebastian Zollner is searching for his big break. A failure as a journalist, a boyfriend, and a human being, he sets out to write the essential biography of the eccentric painter Manuel Kaminski. All he needs to do is ingratiate himself into Kaminski's family, wait for him to kick the bucket, and then reap the rewards. There's only one problem. Kaminski has an agenda of his own, an agenda that will send them on a wild-goose chase to places neither of them ever expected to go.