Martin Harris returns home after a short absence to find his wife doesn't know him, another man is living in his house under his name, and the neighbors think he's a crazy person.
Worse, not one single person — family member, colleague at Yale University (where he's a botany professor), or doctor — can vouch for him.
Worse still, the imposter living with his wife has all of Martin's memories, experience, and knowledge, down to the last detail.
In fact, he's a more convincing Martin than Martin himself.
What has happened?
In this slender 164–page novel, translated nicely from the original French by Mark Polizzotti, you find out.
A clue: nothing supernatural, nothing that couldn't happen, given enough time, money, and effort.
After you've finished the book you might enjoy watching "The Conversation," Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 masterwork of conspiracy theory.
Gene Hackman stars and he's simply magnificent.
If you like that movie, you're ready to be mesmerized by Alan J. Pakula's film, "The Parallax View," starring Warren Beatty and released that same year.
These movies take the same point of view as van Cauwelaert, the novel's author: what if someone decided it was important to create a different explanation for something fundamental and seemingly ordinary — what would it take to make it so believable that trying to convince someone of its untruth would become, for all practical purposes, impossible?
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Is this the 'Mark Polizotti' of Sadi? One thinks so
Sounds good - thank you for the reference
2 - Eric Olsen
yes, he is, and a Blogcritic too
3 - DrPat
You know, I just got a message from Amazon.com to tell me they'd be checking my blog for broken, misspelled or out-dated Amazon links.
Seems like they'd want to spend that effort instead to make sure the AUTHOR's name is attached to each book icon, rather than that of a translator, an editor, or the writer of the introduction. I just see this so often from Amazon!
No offense meant, Mark, but I'm sure when a man writes something original, he wants to have HIS name appear as the author.
/end rant.
4 - Eric Olsen
Pat, the problem seems to be between Amazon and the affiliates, such as us, who use the Amazon MT utility, in that they are listed correctly at Amazon, but they move over here they just list the name that comes first alphabetically, whether that person is the actual author, translator, introduction writer, etc
5 - DrPat
So MT does the swap? I don't use MT at my blog, and the same thing happens.
Interestingly, it happens when I use the same style icon that BlogCritics does, but not when I use the "buy box" icon.
I still think the problem is at Amazon's end. That's why I don't post the title and author using their icon pull any more!