The financial system is undergoing a severe crisis, the leading world power is torturing enemy fighters on a remote island, and many, especially poor people, are dying from a dangerous sexually transmitted disease. Literarily gifted authors remain unknown to the general public and are bitterly poor, while publishers refuse to subject their readers to books about homosexuals. With "Hotel de Dream," Edmund White has written a highly relevant novel set in New York in the year 1900. The novel depicts the last fictional days in the life of the real author Stephen Crane, a sort of "James Dean" of American literature at the end of the 19th century. One day, this very ordinary young man encounters the young hustler Elliott, Crane feeds him, and the two get to know each other. Facing death, Stephen Crane dares to tell the story of this street boy a few years later.