Many thanks to Paul Rodeen of Rodeen Literary Management, an old friend who had the vision to imagine this as a work of fiction when we were struggling to write it as nonfiction, and to Sarah Harvey, our editor at Orca, whose sharp eye helped make the narrative work. Thanks also to our former teammates from the Flash de la Courneuve—notably François Leroy, Jacques Tillet, Fabrice Delcourt and François Rouat—and to Frédéric Martin, for giving us access to people who had been involved in the rioting as well as to police officers assigned to those neighborhoods.
The English Department at the University of Illinois provided generous support from the start, and residencies from the Blue Mountain Center, the MacDowell Colony, the Texas Institute of Letters and the Yaddo Foundation gave us the time to get the work done. Profound thanks.
Portions of chapters seven, eight and thirteen appeared previously in different form in the literary journal Callaloo (vol. 34 no. 4, November 2011), under the title “Going Places.” The essay that inspired the novel also appeared in Callaloo (vol. 32 no. 1, February 2009), under the title “Away, Running: A Look at a Different Paris.”