Excerpt from Muse by Jonathan Galassi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Paul didn't know what to make of these gnomic tea leaves. All he could do was what everyone else was doing: wait.

He was at the booth at one o'clock, but the silence was deafening. After an excruciating wait, word went around that Hendrijk David of the Netherlands had squeaked out enough votes to take the prize. It was said he'd been expecting it for years, sitting complacently by the phone on the appointed morning each October.

The rumor, though, turned out to be erroneous. Dries van Meegeren, another, far more obscure Dutch essayist, had won, setting off an unseemly free-for-all for the acquisition of his largely still-available rights. Publishers from nearly everywhere, who before today had never heard of van Meegeren, swarmed the normally empty Dutch hall, anxious to buy themselves a Nobel Prize winner. The booth of De Bezige Bee, The Busy Bee, van Meegeren's lucky publisher, resembled a rebooking desk in an airline terminal after a canceled flight. (David, meanwhile, never recovered, dying in bitter disappointment a couple of years later.)

In any case, the prize hadn't gone to Ida. Paul consoled himself with the fact that her not having won meant she still could.

He phoned Homer once the office was open in New York.

"Can you believe Dries won?" he cackled, giddy with dis- belief. Van Meegeren had been campaigning for the Nobel for ages, going on reading tours across Scandinavia, writing articles about the work of Swedish Academy members, even taking up with a Swedish woman reputed to be on a first- name basis with the academy's secretary.

"That gonif has been kissing Swedish ass for years," Homer answered. "I was hoping for Les or Adam. I need my Four of a Kind, you know."

"It will happen, Homer. All in good time. Everyone here sends love." Paul relayed greetings from a passel of Homer's long-standing confreres.

"Keep your nose clean and have fun. I'll see you Monday."

"Not Monday. Remember, I'm going to visit Ida Perkins in Venice after the fair."

"Right." Paul could hear Homer clearing his throat across the ocean. "Well, give her a slap on the ass for me, and tell her our arms are always open. Keep me posted!"

"Will do—at least the second and third parts," Paul answered, and rang off. The fair had another two days to run, but he could hardly wait for it to be over. He sleep- walked through his appointments and forced himself to put in an appearance at a few receptions, trying to muster the enthusiasm to host the firm's Friday night dinner in Homer's stead. He couldn't help feeling that, like him, Homer's pals would be on autopilot without their Fearless Leader to mirror back their well-rehearsed performances as cultural grandees—marshals of France, someone called them. Self-importance was ubiquitous, Paul knew, but there was a particular smarmy pungency to the horse-trading in Frankfurt that he found revolting, especially when he was engaging in it. It was a far cry from the poetry of Ida Perkins or the novels of Ted Jonas, sweated out in anguish and solitude. The idea of Ida or Eric Nielsen or Pepita here among these overdressed, overfed word merchants who acted as if they owned their writers' hides made him faintly ill.

On Friday evening he stood in his off-the-rack suit at a long table in an otherwise deserted hotel restaurant as Homer's crowd—Brigitta, Norberto, Matthias, Beatriz, Jorge and Lalli, Héloise, Gianni, Teresa—sat expectantly, waiting, he was sure, for him to commit an unforced error. He made a stab at imitating Homer's offhand delivery of one of his risqué toasts, but Paul's own attempts at public humor usually came off a little forced. All seemed to be going along all right, though, until he made the mistake of mentioning e-books:

"Why, before you know it, you'll be enjoying Padraic and Thor and Pepita and Dmitry on your own devices, just like us!" he exclaimed with ersatz jollity, given that he'd never opened an e-reader himself.

Excerpted from Muse by Jonathan Galassi. Copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Galassi. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.