Standing on the bridge, in the heart of Paris, a little boy is afraid; his cousin Claude is holding him by the ankles above the murky waters of the SeineThis startling opening paragraph will become a backdrop to his subsequent memories as a young man of a childhood marked by sadness. Within him, a struggle is taking place between the sheer wild joy of being alive and the despondency of existence. And it is in Paris, a Paris exquisitely etched, that his unspoken passion for Claude gradually unfolds. Julian Green (1900-1998) was born of American parents in Paris, where he spent most of his life until his death in August 1998. Bilingual, the majority of his sixty- two books, which consisted of novels, essays, plays, as well as the sixteen volumes of his celebrated Journal, were written in French.