bA iPublishers Weeklyi Best Book of 2022 bbrb bbr bA frothy picaresque that ... vibrates to the sweet celestial confusion of Soutine's painting delirious and earthy, reverent and irreligious. -- iThe New York Times Book Review ib p bA wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutineb pSteve Stern's astonishing new novel iThe Village Idioti begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist who incidentally can't swim has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. D