Prostitution is usually referred to as the world's oldest profession - and modern prostitutes are a class of professionals about whose lives we know very little, be they high-class call girls or streetwalkers. What leads a woman to enter this field? What is she really thinking as she entertains her clients? In Whore, Nelly Arcan's heroine, who goes by the name Cynthia, tells us in unvarnished terms exactly what her life is like. Product of a repressed Catholic upbringing, a troubled girl whose beauty was her ticket out of the backwater in which she was raised - Cynthia talks about cleaning up used condoms and the endless parade of johns: from wealthy and privileged father figures to Michael, an observant Jew dressed in black, whose visits lead Cynthia to reflect on Moses and biblical whores; or young, athletic Mathieu, who makes Cynthia realize that the wrinkles and faults of her other clients make her feel young. Disarmingly poetic, Whore is an engrossing and troubling look inside the mind of one woman who makes her living selling her body.