After seeing his old friend Adrian die before his eyes, the narrator makes a leap into the past. The summer he turned 20, he met Jean, a “handsome and simple-minded” architect that he tries to stave off boredom with. He spends his idle days in an unhealthy state of sexual languor, until his childhood friend Adrian roars back into his life. With him is his uncle Freddy, a pathetic and hysterical old drag queen who is housing a homeless woman.

The little group’s adventures are centered on La Java, a deliquescent nightclub and a sanctuary for a semi-clandestine community of students, transvestites and sex freaks. Having run out of steam, the legacy of gay militancy from the 80s is no longer drawing crowds. When the club closes, the dream crumbles, and the hero falls into a sort of primal loneliness. In an excess of distress and boredom, he winds up committing “sexual suicide” – an erratic sexual orgy controlled by discreetly pernicious technology.

The book sheds light on what clubbing used to be like, with the good and the bad, the shadows and the lights, the joys and the sorrow.

A novel that roams on the borders of identity, exploring the themes of homosexuality, exile and writing.