Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932

By Francine Prose

New York Times Bestseller
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Francine Prose delivers her finest work to date in this stunningly inventive masterpiece of love, art, and betrayal in Paris during the 1920s through 1940s

Scandalized and celebrated by Parisian society, Lou Villars is an extraordinary athlete who is confident that one day she will be an inspiration for her gender. She’s also a lesbian and cross dresser and finds a safe haven in the Chameleon Club, a louche nightspot haunted by bankers, sailors, transvestites, and aspiring artists.

As the exuberant ‘20s give way to the depression of the ‘30s, Lou abandons her job as a server and a performer at the Chameleon Club to become a talented, successful race car driver. She falls in love with a German driver, Inge, and is soon ensnared in a web of flattery and lies…culminating in her decision to collaborate with the Nazis. Lou’s life unfolds before the reader through a kaleidoscope of narrating voices: the visionary Gabor; his French girlfriend and future wife Suzanne Dunois; Baroness Lily de Rossignol, an art collector and patron both to Lou and Gabor; Lionel Maine, a hilariously caustic writer; and Nathalie Dunois, a fervent biographer interpreting these events from the present day.

From the sizzling hedonism of the Jazz Age to the maelstrom of fear and violence during the Nazi occupation, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 is a wildly inventive, provocative, and mesmerizing read.