Hallucinating Foucault
Hallucinating Foucault is a 1996 novel by Patricia Duncker. Plot introduction A postgraduate student goes to France to meet the object of his thesis, Paul Michel. Plot summary A postgraduate student writing a thesis on the French writer Paul Michel starts a relationship with the Germanist, a girl he meets in the library, at Cambridge University. She encourages him to look at his biography more closely rather than only focus solely on the texts. They have dinner with her father; later in London he meets Jacques Martel, a friend of her father's who knows Paul Michel. He then decides to move to Paris to find him, and reads his letters to Michel Foucault in the library. He finds out Paul Michel lives in an asylum in Clermont-Ferrand. He arrives there at night and finds accommodation in Romagnat. He starts meeting with Paul Michel. Soon enough, they are allowed to spend whole days out in the gardens. Eventually, they manage to winkle a day outside of the premises. Michel gets attacked by a man in a bar and fights back. He then kisses the protagonist. Michel manages to trick the restaurant into believing they are with the town mayor and thus