Book excerpt: This extravagant novel marks the English-language debut of one of France's most exciting and controversial writers. At the center is a mysterious excavation site in southwest France, where the skull of a 500,000-year-old man has been discovered. Simon, a journalist assigned to do a story on the cave, is a voluptuary keenly responsive to his surroundings, finding an erotic patina over everything he sees, hears, touches, imagines.