Zeropolis

Las Vegas, an artificial city brought to life in the heart of the Mojave desert, is the ultimate urban temptation: its shopping malls, theme parks and casinos offer an unceasing parade of entertainments and diversions. Its architecture combines slick, commercial seduction with a childish, cartoon-like appearance; its streets and arcades are constantly animated with visitors and residents willingly submitting to the opium of this spectacular place.

Las Vegas has always fascinated those who write about the American malaise, from Tom Wolfe to J. G. Ballard, but Bégout reveals the city's other side, adding a valuable philosophical dimension to the nightmarish, fantastic visions that haunt the imagination of novelists and film-makers. The author draws minutely detailed portraits in the form of city scenes - portraits that are often tragic and sometimes extremely comic. Bégout lets himself be dragged into this party, this 'paradise for bastards', as Nick Tosches calls it.

For Bégout, Las Vegas is the consummation of the modern city, the ultimate destination of our urban experiments, the great supermarket of the global village. 'Neither near nor far, neither here nor elsewhere, Las Vegas is distinguished by nothingness. For us it is zeropolis, the non-city that is the very first city, just as zero is the very first number.'