Elephant parade

Elephant Parade is a novel written by Mansur Ahmed. It tells the story of a writer trying to complete his mammoth book, whose ending is evading him, while dealing with an existential crisis.

Plot Summary
Eli is a writer, nearing completion of a novel intending to encompass the entirety of a human being's life: his fictional character, Claire. The book has turned into an opus, whose ending is getting further and further away from Eli. It has absorbed all of his attention to the dismay of his lover, Natalie. She has become jealous of the project and after discovering a page in which Eli writes of an intimate situation involving himself, she realizes he is passionately in love with Claire. Out of perplexity and hurt, she abruptly leaves their apartment in the middle of the night. Eli must have his manuscript completed by the next morning, but is increasingly distracted by his concern for Natalie. He tries to sort his conflicted feelings for her and his resentment for the person she has become, all while dealing with confusion about his own identity and the fact that he has grown deeply attached to a person who doesn't even exist.