The beloved actor and screenwriter Gene Wilder’s first novel, My French Whore, set during World War I, delicately and elegantly explores a most unusual romance. It’s almost the end of the war and Paul Peachy, a young railway employee and amateur actor in Milwaukee, realizes his marriage is one-sided. He enlists, and ships off to France. Peachy instantly realizes how out of his depth he is–and never more so than when he is captured. Risking everything, Peachy–who as a child of immigrants speaks German–makes the reckless decision to impersonate one of the enemy’s most famous spies.

As the urbane and accomplished spy Harry Stroller, Peachy has access to a world he could never have known existed–a world of sumptuous living, world-weary men, and available women. But when one of those women–Annie, a young, beautiful and wary courtesan–turns out to be more than she seems, Peachy’s life is transformed forever.