Calvin committed to memory his history in hopes of sparing himself the devastation of its repetition. But in the final analysis, was he any less doomed? Having persevered through personal trauma, he found contentment in Southern France, where he established a holiday-like existence, based largely on avoiding the traditional barbs of modern life. Then he met Klarysa Pavlichenko, the precocious granddaughter of an eccentric Ukrainian vintner. And everything changed. Set on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea at the end of the twentieth century, Tete Pressee follows a rowdy cast of characters in various states of obsession and pursuit, and offers a heady glimpse into the progression of a breakdown. With his highly ambitious, flamboyant first novel, Panozzo has betrayed an inner obsession to rival that of his tireless, raving characters. By turns aggressive and critical, sympathetic and forgiving, sober and brimming with drunken lunacy; ever poetic and scenic, Tete Pressee is a cracking work of literary fiction with enough whimsical banter and florid prose to bring Nabokov to full titter and grin from the grave."