The Gigolo — Penguin Modern

The sap had dried up, the sap, the incentive, the fever, the desire to do, to act, to act the fool, make love, create. A middle-aged woman breaks with her handsome young lover, a placid husband is suspected of infidelity, and a dying man reflects on his extramarital affairs, in these tales of love and disillusionment from the author of Bonjour Tristesse. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson, essays radical and inspiring, poems moving and disturbing, stories surreal and fabulous, taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New Yorks underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.