A wicked satire about the chaos that results when there's a rule for everything.In the over-legislated world of this outrageous black comedy, a death-row inmate becomes a darling of the media— and the tobacco conglomerates—after he demands his right to a final cigarette . . . in a smoke-free prison. Meanwhile, a little girl accuses a petty municipal bureaucrat of sexual perversion when she catches him sneaking a cigarette. Incredulously, he realizes that in this world where children are not just kings, but tyrants, a cigarette could lead him to the electric chair.At the cutting edge of European fiction, controversial author Benoît Duteurtre creates a world wildly askew, yet disconcertingly close to our own, in this daring, antic satire.