When Arthur learns that his boyfriend of many years is about to marry someone else, he decides to leave town. Soon he will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape from a Saharan sandstorm, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. A scintillating satire of the American abroad and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2018.