Le Voleur

The narrator opens with a brazen confession: he has stolen a manuscript. Not money, not jewels, but a sheaf of pages belonging to someone named Randal. What follows is part picaresque adventure, part philosophical provocation. The thief brings us through Brussels, into hotels, through the labyrinth of his own justifications, all while observing a society that preaches morality but practices self-interest with glee. Darien, writing from deep within the anarchist tradition, uses this premise to unravel the pretensions of bourgeois ethics. The tone is wry, knowing, occasionally savage. This is a novel that asks: what is theft in a world that steals from everyone, everywhere, all the time? The answer is as uncomfortable as it is entertaining.