As an ash cloud impends over Paris, our English narrator wakes up alone and heads out in search of his French girlfriend, a habitual night-time wanderer. Passing through the unfamiliar landscape he recollects how they met and how their lives intertwined. But as his leads dry up and the ash falls heavier, he realises that even his most basic assumptions – about Paris, his girlfriend, and himself – are overturned once darkness falls.
GREY CATS is a picaresque descent into the belly of the Parisian night – a mischievously comic novel that explores the psychology and mythology of place, questions the fluid boundaries of consciousness, and ideas of identity, love, and lost direction.
Against a backdrop including the illusive Commissaire; a gang of roller-skating urban guerrillas; an army of demonic marionettes; an underground swingers’ club and the blood-soaked Theatre-du-Grand-Guignol, unseen in Paris for half a century, we quickly come to understand the truth behind the old French expression: “At night, all cats are grey.”
