Two colleagues share an apartment in Paris. One wants to become a famous writer; the other is just having the best time possible. Both are experts in seduction of young hippies.

The two stories that make up this book, Quiet Days in Chichy and Mara-Marignan have a fairly unique editorial history. Newly returned to Paris in 1940 without a coin in his pocket, Miller accepted Barnet Runer's commission to write to a dollar the erotic novel page for an Oklahoma erotic and collector. From this came the first versions of this work. If Henry Miller was able to offer an indelible image of New York, in the Tropic of Capricorn. But the fact that he settled then in the City of Light made him a privileged observer of Parisian life and through the sexual revelry of his friends and roommates Joey (Miller) and Carl (Alfred Perlés), traces in this book a splendid image of the nocturnal, protibulary and sordid Paris of 1933.