Philippe Tapon’s novel is about an expatriate in Paris—a farm boy from Kansas dying of AIDS—and his search for immortality through the vehicle of a book on his life, written by the author. It is also about the relationship of a writer to his subject, and the nature of authorship.

I felt the image—a photograph of a man photographing a man—was expressive of the layering of autobiographical truth and fiction, as well as the themes of memory and death, that permeate the book.