Paris Twilight

Book excerpt: A novel that “elegantly weaves together many strands—the political, the historical, and the romantic, richly braided with adventure” (Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs). Paris, 1990. While demonstrations against the First Gulf War rage, Matilde Anselm, professor of cardiac anesthesiology, arrives in the City of Light from New York to be part of the surgical team performing a heart transplant—and soon finds herself falling in love with a suave Arab diplomat. Even as her concerns mount over shadowy protocols surrounding the planned transplant, a surprise inheritance—a mysterious apartment and trove of love letters from the Spanish Civil War, bequeathed to her by a stranger—sweeps Matilde through a hidden Paris and into the labyrinth of her own buried past. As the diplomat and the apartment reluctantly reveal their secrets, the tragedies they unearth open a further mystery: the enigma that has haunted Matilde’s life. A dizzying tale of personal transformation, Russ Rymer’s “richly plotted, ardently imagined first novel” is populated by “unforgettable characters [who] grapple with the mystery of what love means, and what it costs” (Geraldine Brooks, author of People of the Book). “Russ Rymer is a virtuoso of mystery and misapprehension. With Paris Twilight, he has created a novel of fine intelligence that richly rewards the reader’s closest attention. An American original.” —Ward Just, author of An Unfinished Season and Exiles in the Garden