Red Haze

the long version

" ... a tale told deftly by the brilliant French minimalist Christian Gailly. It is a story at once spare and mysteriously complex, complicated by the ever odder perspective of the narrator as the details accumulate. Lucien, the narrotor's friend, is a rake, a womanizer who womanizes once too often and loses his offending member to his latest conquest. As the narrator's interest in the mutilated man and the vengeful woman grows into an obsession, Red haze becomes an unsettling story of how closely intertwined love and hatred, passion and cruelty can be."--Cover.