The Comforts of Exile

"Entertaining, enlightening and finely written . . ."

-Piers Paul Read, author of Scarpia and Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

The insufferable, self-sabotaging hero of Minor Indignities returns, wearing a black turtleneck and strolling down the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

For twenty-two-year-old Colin Phelps, who fills notebooks with dazzling theoretical insights but is powerless to describe a pancake, escape is a permanent state of mind. Little wonder that when his girlfriend Julia leaves him for a job in New York, Colin flees to a charming suburb of Paris, equipped only with a passable French accent and a tenuous connection to a famed literary player.

Before long, he is holding court in Left Bank caf廥, flirtatiously jousting with the sharp-witted, devoutly religious Laure, and overseeing a translation project that could launch his career. But then rumors of his Parisian entanglement reach Laure's high-powered lawyer ex, and even Julia in New York. Soon the new life Colin has constructed for himself starts to crumble, as he falls prey to jealousy, the lure of old attachments, and-above all-his paralyzing tendency to overthink everything.

". . . delightful storytelling . . . Status signals and cultural mores-academic, sexual, and literary-are all closely, humorously, and dramatically observed, but what shines forth on every page is a winsome invitation to discern, often well before our main character does, the providential grace of pride and humiliation, of shame and forgiveness."

-Joshua Hochschild, co-author of A Mind at Peace

"The Comforts of Exile is a coming-of-age novel for a culture struggling to come of age. The romantic, literary, and spiritual odyssey of Colin Phelps will captivate readers, all the way to its most unforeseen and astonishing conclusion."

-Daniel McInerny, author of The Good Death of Kate Montclair