Picasso Fever: A Novel

Gus Flynn teaches Literature at Swanton College, a small liberal arts college where his affluent students question the literary merit of suicide letters and ponder the aesthetic ambitions of the Zodiac Killer. Gus, along with his married lover Nina Petrova and apocalyptic colleague Kenny Greenberg, watches from the bucolic campus as unexplained incidents connected to museums and cathedrals begin to spread across the globe. The media dubs the phenomenon “Picasso Fever” to describe how the afflicted enter a fugue-like state after an encounter with art, wandering for days or weeks and waking with no memory of their travels. At first a novelty investigated in the murky world of conspiracy sites, the crisis suddenly reaches Swanton. In the midst of the confusion, Gus wakes to find himself in his hometown of Galaxy, Ohio, unable to account for his movements the previous two weeks. As Picasso Fever explodes into a full-blown pandemic, Gus is confronted by the life he left behind, and by his memories of a missing woman.