Coup De FoudreCoup De Foudre

"[This] book is anchored by the full text of the provocatively topical title novella that appeared in Harper's, a sometimes farcical, ultimately tragic story about the president of an international lending institution accused of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a New York hotel. Recalling the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair with irony and compassion, Kalfus skewers international political gridlock and the hypocrisies of acceptable sexual conduct. In 'The Moment They Were Waiting For,' a murderer on death row casts a spell granting the inhabitants of his city the foreknowledge of the dates they will die. In 'v. The Large Hadron Collider,' a judge distracted by the faint possibility of an adulterous affair must decide whether to throw out a nuisance lawsuit that raises the even fainter possibility that the entire Earth may be destroyed. 'The Un' is a nostalgic story of a young writer's struggles as he tries to surmount the colossal, heavily guarded wall that apparently separates writers who have been published from those who have not"--