The Thread

Christophe Bourdin was certain he would be the author of a single book. Diagnosed HIV-positive at the height of the epidemic in Paris, he began writing the exquisitely beautiful, painfully intense pages that would become The Thread.

It begins with the hypochondriac days: days of obsessive hygiene, of microscopic attention to contamination, of seeing dangers everywhere. In serpentine sentences that capture the frenzied paranoia of the time, Bourdin recreates the consciousness of a young gay man whose world has suddenly become charged with threat. With his illness becoming manifest, the man writes a diary to record the passing of his final days. Beginning with searing intensity, the entries gradually become mixed with currents of fantasy and visions of an alternative future.

First published in 1994, The Thread is appearing in English for the first time in a stunning translation by the prize-winning Jeffrey Zuckerman. Lucid and moving, it is an essential lost classic of AIDS literature.