A middle-aged man sits at a café table and begins to speak to a woman. He tells her about his life, about his opinions, and most particularly about his hatred for cauliflower gratin versus his love for trout amandine.

Is this Éric Chevillard, vocalising his opinions through the medium of a first-person narrator? Do readers consistently mis-identify such protagonists with their authors? With his characteristic élan, extravagant humour, and perfectly pitched tone, Chevillard, one of France’s foremost writers, examines these most intricate of literary questions.

Using footnotes and a variety of registers to investigate the relationships between reader, author and character, Chevillard also takes us on an adventure following an ant and an anteater, suggests a murder or two, and tries to persuade us of his, or possibly his character’s, gastronomic convictions.