The title calls up a day in 1969, on which a series of odd—at first droll, later increasingly unsettling—incidents begin to beset a doctoral student in Paris. Trying to wrap his head around the forces that threaten to take over his life, Marty and his best friend Augustus spiral into a deepening crisis, even as they question whether what they stumbled upon is only a figment of their imaginations. Unfortunately for them, their summer will end tragically, raising a host of questions about what exactly they encountered on the streets of the fever-hot city.

The Ides of August is a book about friendship, love, and social change, as much as it is about our place in a universe, which is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.