Over the centuries, the figure of the dreaming provincial has provided Paris with some of its most enduring subversive literary characters, from Restif de la Bretonne's roaming peasant to Louis Aragon's classic surrealist rustic in Paris Peasant. Following in this savage and satirical tradition, the author gives us a peasant for the fin de siecle, a dreamer wary of elevated comparisons, who prowls the sidestreets and underbelly of his adopted city with a kind of genius. In his dreambook are recorded the city's rituals of food and sex, the corrupted landscapes of the industrial suburbs and the inadvertent exoticism of the Metro.