A noir set in the seediest backwaters of the French publishing industry, The Collaborators tells the story of a hapless drifter who, after years of not particularly heroic effort, finally manages to write a book. A good book? A bad book? Well, it's complicated -- and soon the complications he's set in motion spiral entirely out of control. Praised by Pierre Bayard in "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read," and finally available in English by one of our greatest translators, "The Collaborators" is both a sinister thriller and a comedy of outrageous proportions.

The novel was published to great acclaim in France in 1997 under the title "Ferdinaud C?line."