Every night at Tram 83, you see striking students and sex-starved diggers pouring in, flirtatious young women, first-class tourists and waitresses, the “biscottes” and the young ladies of Avignon, the railroad diva and Mortel Combat, in short, the entire City-Country ready to let loose to incredible music, gathered there in the hope of seeing the world as it is and as it might degenerate.

Lucien, having just arrived from the hinterlands to escape various political police forces, clings to his pen amid the tumult and, without realizing it, finds himself stuck in a diamond mine, in police custody, or in the bed of a girl with big-tomato breasts. He really stirs up those ladies! Meanwhile, Requiem, a devilishly scheming ex-buddy of the aforementioned, and Malingeau, a publisher and lover of young flesh, merrily vie for the crowds’ attention. For in the City-Country—whether the ridiculous dissident General likes it or not—only one thing matters: ruling over Tram 83 and winning the favor of this turbulent, lying populace, always on the brink of a riot.

A highly poetic and edgy debut novel, *Tram 83* is an incredible immersion in the language and energy of a reinvented country—a hallucinatory and funny tidal wave where every sentence pulses with a fierce will to live. Welcome to another world.