Rat Man of Paris

Book excerpt: The Rat Man, Etienne Poulsifer, is the survivor of an unthinkable childhood event-- the burning of his village and his family by the Nazis. When Poulsifer hears that a Nazi war criminal is in a Paris jail, he evolves a kind of street theater piece as a political protest in which he tricks himself up in Nazi regalia and wheels around a fox fur in a baby carriage. His obsessive and ill-considered, yet to him logical and necessary act careens out of control, and the startling outcome represents both loss and redemption.