Multiple plot lines interweave with twentieth-century literary allusions as hapless bureaucrat P. attempts to secure delivery of a valuable cultural relic. Patrice Martin"s ticklish tip of the hat to the writing of Franz Kafka also evokes the literary techniques of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Paul Auster. Polymath Patrice Martin is a writer, musician, and politician who is a former clerk in Canada"s House of Commons, and currently is a Gatineau city councilor. He confesses his working life in government bureaucracy helped shape this, his first novel. Chantal Bilodeau is a New York?based playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Quebec.