You Deserve Nothing: A Novel

William Silver is a talented and charismatic young teacher. His unconventional methods raise eyebrows among his colleagues and superiors, but his students are devoted to him. He brings ideas into the classroom that profoundly affect how they conduct their lives. His discussions of Camus, Faulkner, Sartre, Keats, and other kindred souls breathe life into his students’ sense of social justice and their capacities for philosophical and ethical thought. But unbeknownst to his adoring pupils, Silver proves incapable of living up to the ideals he encourages in others. Emotionally scarred by failures in his personal life and driven to distraction by the City of Light’s overpowering carnality and beauty, Silver succumbs to a temptation that will change the course of his life. His fall will render him a criminal in the eyes of some, and human, all too human, in the eyes of others.

In Maksik’s stylish prose, Paris is sensual, dazzling, and dangerously seductive. It serves as a fitting backdrop for a dramatic tale about the tension between desire and action, and about the complex relationship that exists between our public and private selves.