Is the story of a man possessed. The man is Martin Swann, our melancholy, introspective protagonist, who has always “felt I was living backwards—the future seemed more real than the past,” and has grown to feel “as if ordinary people no longer existed.” His obsession begins when he stumbles across a film he finds eerily compelling, by an obscure French director named Jean Rien. Martin senses that the movie touches the edge of some awful, crucial significance; he feels driven to seek out more of Rien’s work. He soon finds, though, that Rien’s films are more than merely obscure—they are maddeningly elusive, impossible to find, and the closer he seems to get to a lead on Rien, the more harshly it is snatched away from him.
