"The Benefactor" is Susan Sontag"s first book and first novel. It was originally published in 1963, and introduced a unique writer to the world. In the form of a memoir by a latter-day Candide named Hippolyte, "The Benefactor" leads us on a kind of psychic Grand Tour, in which Hippolyte"s violently imaginative dream life becomes indistinguishable from his surprising experiences in the "real world".