EVENING IN BYZANTIUM

'They were honest mean and thieves, pimps and panderers and men of virtue. Therewere beautiful women and delicious girls, handsome men with the faces of swines....' 'They were all gamblers in a game with no rules, placing their bets debonairly or in the sweat of fear...' These are some of the characters in Irwin Shaw's bestselling EVENING IN BYZANTIUM. The place is Cannes, the setting, a film festival. The hero is Jesse Craig, forty-eight years old, whose survival is at stake in the midst of this gaudy carnival.