Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century
American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who
falls hard for the elusive mocking unstable Camilla Lopez a Mexican waitress. Struggling to
survive he perseveres until at last his first novel is published. But the bright light of
success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini
forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.
