This Breathing World

Can stories change not just the future, but more compellingly, the past? Two stories are placed in front of one another like mirrors. The first of this pair of thrillers is set in first-century Rome and relates the rise and fall of Mazuf, a homosexual Syrian scribe and renowned man of letters who is driven to kill. The second is a confession by a present-day American named Laurence; it seems to be mostly about his sexual exploits during his student days at Harvard, but we soon find out that there is a lot more to his tale than we had originally bargained for. Laurence, a disaffected and sophisticated narrator, is a murderer too. These mysteries are constructed as reflections of each other, like mirrors set up in a deserted ballroom, enveloping readers in the stories of the young murderers told through their own eyes. In a playfully unsettling and wonderfully sensual novel, prize-winning author Jose Luis de Juan explores the secret history of desire and the dark desire to make history.