Marseille provides magnificent material for writing. For a long time, when it still had its eye on the sea, it was in fact a veritable 'open city' for writers on shore leave. It welcomed the greatest globe-trotting writers in transit, advocates of a vagabond literature that turned Marseille into one of the capitals of 'world fiction,' well before the English supposedly coined the concept. This new addition to Akashic's Noir series takes readers to the gritty underbelly of France's second city.