<P>Paris, 1900. Aileen Bowman arrives at the Exposition Universelle, where all the world has gathered to witness the birth of modernity. A journalist in her mid-thirties, unmarried and fiercely independent, she has been sent to cover the Exposition for the <I>New York Tribune</I>, and her arrival soon creates a scandal in the city of lights.<br><br> But it seems the life she left behind on the distant Nevada plains may have followed her across the Atlantic, and before long Aileen finds herself caught in a deadly tussle between the old world and the new.<br><br> The final volume in Antonin Varenne''s epic historical trilogy, <I>The Canvas of the World</I> takes us to heart of Paris, from the emerging metropolis to the neighbourhood brothels, in a novel driven by passion and a yearning for freedom.<br><br><B>Translated from the French by Sam Taylor</B></P>