Violette

'Brussels is a shape-shifter, it plays tricks on the mind', it says in the first few lines of this short novel. After learning about the true identity of his mother and the sinister machinations of his foster father, Thomas leaves the comfort of his grandmother's gloomy fin-de-siecle villa and embarks on a drug-fuelled odyssey through his home-town. But the city is elusive and nothing is what it seems to be. His sexual encounters as a hustler bring him into contact with a man who has a very dark past and who becomes Thomas' nemesis.