In an old box of books at the newsagent’s in the small town of Crux-la-Ville, Constantin Caillaud comes across Black Snow, a book by Émilien Petit. Constantin has never heard of, even though he was convinced he had read everything Petit had ever written. The discovery is all the more exciting in that it gives him an excuse to get in touch with Hélène, his evanescent lover, who introduced him to Petit’s work, and helped him learn to love it. But just as he is about to see Hélène to show her the precious book, it seems to have disappeared again. Blithely googling the title, Constantin can find no trace of Black Snow on line. He contacts the publisher, who says there’s no such book in the catalogue. So then he writes to the author himself, as well as to his writer friends, readers a rare and clever participation of famous figures from the French literary scene: Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Olivier Rolin, Antoine Volodine, Patrick Kéchichian and Edouard Launet all respond emotionally to the hoax. But what hoax? Constantin wasn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. Yet the conclusion of the saga could well give readers the impression they’ve been taken for a ride!

The interplay between fiction and reality is reminiscent of Emmanuel Carrère’s La Moustache.