Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

Imagine a dark photograph: two women, lovers, lean against each other at a nightclub table. One is slight and pretty; the other-dressed like a man, with cropped hair and a heavy build-stares into the distance. Her gaze is chilling, even without the knowledge that she will become a Nazi collaborator during the German occupation of France.

When Lou Villars is photographed by up-and-coming artist Gabor Tsenyi, she hasn't yet become a celebrity, or experienced the tumultuous events that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something darker. Lou is an extraordinary athlete, confident that one day she will be an inspiration for her gender and her country. She is also a scandal to Parisian society-a lesbian and a cross-dresser-and she finds a safe haven in the Chameleon Club, a louche nightspot haunted by bankers, sailors, transvestites, and aspiring artists, all seeking to release their truest selves.

As the exuberant '20s give way to the depression of the '30s, Lou abandons her job as a server and a performer at the Chameleon Club to become a talented race car driver, hovering on the brink of success. She falls in love with a seductive blonde German driver, Inge, and is soon ensnared in a web of flattery and lies. Lou's life unfolds before the reader through a kaleidoscope of narrating voices belonging to those whose lives she touched: the visionary Gabor, whose publication of Lou's image has dire consequences; his French girlfriend and future wife Suzanne Dunois; Baroness Lily de Rossignol, an art collector and patron both to Lou and Gabor; Lionel Maine, a hilariously caustic writer; and Nathalie Dunois, a fervent biographer interpreting these events from the present day.

Francine Prose evokes Paris with irresistible brio and an incisive sense of humor, from the sizzling hedonism of the Jazz Age to the maelstrom of fear and violence that blankets the city during the Nazi occupation. As increasingly difficult circumstances turn one thwarted individual to treachery-and other characters to defiant acts of bravery and perseverance, the novel raises critical questions about the difficulty of locating historical truth, much less dispensing moral judgments.

At once epic and intimate, LOVERS AT THE CHAMELEON CLUB, PARIS 1932 explores the genesis of evil, the unforeseen consequences of love, and the ultimate unreliability of all narrative. Wildly inventive, disturbing, provocative, and a mesmerizing read, it is Francine Prose's finest work to date