Jean-Jacques Choul—a Goncourt laureate, Ingrid Cavendish's husband, and a friend of Saint Laurent—began writing this novel to comprehend a strange offer from Raoul Ruiz: to star in a remake of The Hands of Orlac as the mad Doctor Gogol.

Instead of filming, Choul embarks on a journey through his memory, where the will-o'-the-wisps of literature and cinema flicker: he wanders through Paris at night with Jarmusch; drinks in 1980s Rome with producer Rassam; learns to smoke a cigarette from Fassbinder; mourns his childhood friend Jean Eustache; haunts the spirit of Talleyrand and dissolves into the characters of Shakespeare, Proust, Gide, Bataille, and Étienne Dao.

"What did Raoul see? What in my appearance could connect me to a frightening image from a science fiction film? I admit that when, on cold winter evenings, I stand alone, limping, tracing smooth zigzags in my long black Yamamoto coat (I couldn't bring myself to have arthrosis surgery or hem it) and wearing large dark glasses, a passing family might misunderstand and be misled... But as soon as I sit down, without my glasses and coat, I instantly feel more timid. Then I thought that Raoul might have seen a week-old issue of Liberation: to illustrate my interview-reportage about Jim Jarmusch, I was photographed with him on the empty Bir Hakeim bridge, we were there like two escaped criminals, night, only in the distance, in the west, the occasional flash of lightning glimmers, the iron reinforcement of the bridge, in appearance we resemble two characters from science fiction - he always has a wary posture, silver hair, a mutant face, and I have wide dark glasses, in the photo a large white halo has formed around my face and everything looks as if we are being chased ... "