by Luke Rhinehart

Set in the late '60s, NAKED BEFORE THE WORLD is a comic romp celebrating the follies of both hippies and the establishment. The novel follows the innocent Katya as she begins her first year abroad studying art at the Lowdong Institute on the island of Mallorca. The mountain village is populated by artists and freaks and frauds and Katya finds it hard to tell which is which. The hippy Franz seems to be everything her Catholic college warned her against, but he seems much more honest and appealing than anyone else. With many of the men (and a couple of the women) coming on to her, Katya struggles to determine who she should trust and what sort of a person she wants to be--and creates all sorts of hilarious mayhem. When the famous Spanish artist Piccolo Londo asks her to help him paint his next masterpiece--he and his assistant always working nude--she hesitates, but everyone assures her that it is a 'great opportunity.' Only at the end of the novel does Katya come to know who she wants to be and stand, at last, naked before the world (and before most of the village). Much of the novel was written at the same time as Luke's great classic novel THE DICE MAN and has the same crazy humor and outrageous comedy.