A compelling literary novel set in Paris, Toronto, and Normandy in the 19th and 20th centuries, in which memory, imagination, and desire intermingle. Maurice, a former monk, is torn between conflicting desires that have brought his life to an impasse. He goes back to the Bel-Event, the house of his childhood—an abandoned manor on the edge of a Normandy village. As memories of his overbearing father, loving mother, and outspoken sister flood back, he must come to terms with a secret he has kept his entire he is gay. Having hidden this part of himself so deeply, and for so long, Maurice can only confront his deepest truth by imagining a long-dead relative with the same name and the same struggles. This other Maurice lives a century prior. He manages to embrace his sexuality, takes on lovers, suffers boldly, and discovers that life is much larger and richer than he had thought. Can present-day Maurice mine the depth of his childhood and vivid imagination to emancipate himself from shame and compliance? Will he become able to find and speak aloud his own true name? Simultaneously entrancing and heart-breaking, Albert Crepet’s Nameless River is unexpectedly witty, dark, incisive, and truly mesmerizing in its description of persons and places. Before you know it, you will find yourself in the heart and mind of a man fighting for his life, and of the seven-year-old Normandy boy he once was.