Night

Both a political novel of deep sophistication and a dazzling meditation on the craft and meaning of fiction, Night explores the redemptive powers of the imagination as it shows us the mind of a world-class novelist at work. Night begins as a writer's notebook. It appears the narrative of a decent man, a writer of liberal sensibility who lives in a truly hellish place, where "nightworkers" prowl the streets, savagely murdering victims at random and leaving cryptic inscriptions about the advent of some apocalyptic "big night." It is a world of ritual mass-murder, of unrelenting paranoia and terror for its own sake, a world rife with rumor and deception. The writer tells of being blackmailed through a supremely cynical political maneuver into attending a foreign conference as a showpiece delegate. The journey he relates begins in deceit and ends in disaster . Set alongside the writer's story is the story of the creation of the book itself. In asides and footnotes, the writer decides on one narrative strategy, second-guesses it, then tries another, as he works his way toward an ending he cannot quite imagine. The author presents the book-in-progress through the voices of four curiously