The Bay of Foxes

by Sheila Kohler

Overview

An erotic tale of passion and power and their dangerous consequences. Sheila Kohler's memoir Once We Were Sisters is now available.

In 1978, Dawit, a young, beautiful, and educated Ethiopian refugee, roams the streets of Paris. By chance, he spots the famous French author M., who at sixty is at the height of her fame. Seduced by Dawit's grace and his moving story, M. invites him to live with her. He makes himself indispensable, or so he thinks. When M. brings him to her Sardinian villa, beside the Bay of Foxes, Dawit finds love and temptation—and perfects the art of deception.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143121015
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/26/2012
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sheila Kohler was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She later lived in Paris for fifteen years, where she married, completed her undergraduate degree in Literature at the Sorbonne, and a graduate degree in Psychology at the Institut Catholique. She moved to the U.S. in 1981 and earned an MFA in Writing at Columbia. She currently teaches at Princeton University. Becoming Jane Eyre is her 10th book. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, O Magazine and included in the Best American Short Stories. She has twice won an O’Henry Prize, as well as an Open Fiction Award, a Willa Cather Prize, and a Smart Family Foundation Prize. Her novel Cracks was nominated for an Impac Award, and has been made into a feature film to be distributed by IFC. She has been published in 8 countries.

What People are Saying About This

Joan Schenkar

"In this elegant, sensuous, literary thriller, set in the poshest enclaves of Paris, Sardinia, and Rome in 1978, Sheila Kohler ignites her narrative with a fairy tale-like encounter between a poor but princely young Ethiopian refuge and a celebrated sixty-year-old Parisian novelist whose exotic history and behavior bring Marguerite Duras sharply to mind.

  
The mutual ambush of identities Kohler imagines for the boy and the Frenchwoman, the vivid exchange of  bad motives and good intentions,  make for — among other pleasures — an indelibly written hommage to the art of Miss Highsmith and the talents of  Mr. Ripley.
 
This is a book to savor on every  level."

From the Publisher

“Kohler, a master of psychological intrigue, begins with an encounter in a Parisian café between the famous, sixtyish M. and a young, impoverished refugee named Dawit. The pair decamps to Sardinia’s Bay of Foxes and into a sinister affair.”—Reader’s Digest

Editorial Reviews

Set primarily in Paris in 1978, Kohler's newest (after Children of Pithiviers) is the tale of Dawit, a beautiful, young but broke Ethiopian refugee, and M., a 60-year-old novelist who writes obsessively about her girlhood in a French African colony and her long lost Ethiopian lover. When Dawit fortuitously meets M. in a café, the latter is overcome by his striking resemblance to her old flame, and subsequently asks Dawit to come live with her. Within days, Dawit finds himself wearing M.'s clothes, offering feedback on her manuscripts, and even pretending to be his benefactor in written and telephonic correspondence. All is well until the pair retires to M.'s Italian villa on the Cala di Volpe, the titular Bay of Foxes. There, Dawit grows restless—once a slave to hunger and poverty, his improved state seems nevertheless characterized by a similar condition of bondage, something Dawit resolves to escape, whatever the cost. Set against a richly dramatic landscape and historical background, Kohler's work is rife with duplicity, jealousy, wealth, and violence, but the characters feel more like self-consciously literary creations than flesh-and-blood people. As a result, the thrills are superficial and what should shock falls flat. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Shelia Kohler's The Bay Of Foxes is a sexy subtle psychological thriller. With delicate and terrifying grace Kohler illuminates the complex hidden lives of her characters, whose needs and desires transgress the bounds of the familiar and comfortable. This seductive and wonderfully unexpected tale confirms Sheila Kohler's place as a master of the novel.”—A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven

“Her work is both spare and sensuous – understated and fraught with tension…involving the reader intensely in the narrative.”—Joyce Carol Oates, author of Them

“Patricia Highsmith meets Nadine Gordimer in this mesmerizing tale of sex, longing and murder.”—Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Death Artist

“There is a territory—fictional and psychological—that Sheila Kohler has now marked as her own. . . . I am full of admiration.”—J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winning author of Disgrace

“Her stories are elegant, smooth, and gorgeously sensual, belying the tension that crackles beneath. Long after I’ve finished reading one of her stories, the image continues to pulse.”—Amy Tan, New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club

“Kohler, a master of psychological intrigue, begins with an encounter in a Parisian café between the famous, sixtyish M. and a young, impoverished refugee named Dawit. The pair decamps to Sardinia’s Bay of Foxes and into a sinister affair.”—Reader’s Digest

"In this elegant, sensuous, literary thriller, set in the poshest enclaves of Paris, Sardinia, and Rome... an indelibly written hommage to the art of Miss Highsmith and the talents of Mr. Ripley. This is a book to savor on every level."—Joan Schenkar, author of The Talented Miss Highsmith

From the Publisher

Her stories are elegant, smooth, and gorgeously sensual, belying the tension that crackles beneath. Long after I’ve finished reading one of her stories, the image continues to pulse.

Amy Tan

There is a territory—fictional and psychological—that Sheila Kohler has now marked as her own. . . . I am full of admiration.

J. M. Coetzee

Patricia Highsmith meets Nadine Gordimer in this mesmerizing tale of sex, longing and murder.

Jonathan Santlofer

Her work is both spare and sensuous – understated and fraught with tension…involving the reader intensely in the narrative.

Joyce Carol Oates

Shelia Kohler's The Bay Of Foxes is a sexy subtle psychological thriller. With delicate and terrifying grace Kohler illuminates the complex hidden lives of her characters, whose needs and desires transgress the bounds of the familiar and comfortable. This seductive and wonderfully unexpected tale confirms Sheila Kohler's place as a master of the novel.

A. M. Homes

After killing a prison guard to escape internment for being an "aristocratic anarchist," Dawit turns up in Paris, dirt poor and bedraggled. This beautiful son of a titled Ethiopian upper-class family charms M., a celebrated 60-year-old Parisian author, whom he accidentally meets in a café. M. adopts Dawit as her muse and asks him to live with her, spending a fortune on him and even taking him to her second home in Sardinia. Dawit develops new skills and becomes M.'s editor and secretary, but when he refuses to comply with her demands for sex—he is gay—she turns cold and distant and eventually asks him to leave. The novel climaxes in a scene of tense intrigue at the Bay of Foxes, M.'s favorite place to swim. VERDICT Writing in an elegant and sensual style, Kohler (Becoming Jane Eyre) creates a sensational novel whose audience will include—but will not be limited to—gay readers.—Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

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