Things have not been going well for Dez. Hes broke, jobless, angry and without a future. Then he happens to see an episode of Tovah in the Afternoon featuring the fabulously successful memoirist Jasper Ulrickson A masterful satire, this novel hinges on celebrity envyand the anarchic imperatives of desire. Dez, determined to bring Jasper down to his own level, devises a diabolical scheme to ruin Jaspers reputation and seize his fortune. He uses a novel weapon: forbidden Eros. What ensues is a descent into psychological nightmare, one lit with dark flashes of humor and illuminating tragedy. Like watching Othello fall to Iagos masterful manipulations, we are riveted by Dezs cruel trick, this coldly calculated attempt to destroy another human beingthis spectacle of an upright man brought low by envy and the implacable demands of desire. A risk-taking and courageous novel unsparing in its dissection of the erotic impulse, An Upright Man speaks to our eras corrosive fascination with the cult of celebrity, money and the compulsion to get ahead at all costs.