誰說你不能逃避問題？你是一位即將年滿五十的失敗小說家。一封婚禮邀請函寄到了：你交往了九年的男友已經和別人訂婚了。你不能答應──那樣太尷尬了──也不能拒絕──那樣會顯得你很失敗。你的辦公桌上擺滿了世界各地一些不太成熟的文學活動的邀請函。

問：你打算怎麼安排離開這裡？

答：你全部接受了。

可能會出什麼差錯？亞瑟·萊斯將在巴黎險些墜入愛河，在柏林險些墜樓身亡，在撒哈拉沙漠的沙塵暴中僥倖逃到摩洛哥的滑雪小屋，意外地成為印度南部一家基督教靜修中心（唯一的）駐地作家，並在阿拉伯海的一個荒島上遇到他這輩子最不想遇到的人。在某個時刻：他將迎來五十歲生日。在這一切中，有他的初戀，也有他的終生情人。

儘管充滿了各種不幸、失誤、誤解和錯誤，《萊斯》最終仍然是一部愛情故事。

這部作品是對海外美國人的精彩諷刺，是對時間和人性的反思，是一段關於失去機會的苦樂參半的愛情故事。 《紐約時報》曾稱讚其“充滿靈感、抒情”、“輓歌式”、“獨具匠心”，但也有人認為其“略顯多愁善感”。萊斯展現了一位處於才華巔峰的作家如何揭開我們共同的人類喜劇的序幕。

Who says you can't run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can't say yes--it would be too awkward--and you can't say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.

Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.

A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, a bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times has hailed as "inspired, lyrical," "elegiac," "ingenious," as well as "too sappy by half," Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.