On elegance while sleeping

Tells the story, in the form of a surreal diary, of a lonely, syphilitic French soldier, who - after too many brothels and disappointments - returns from Africa longing for a world with more elegance. He promptly falls in love with a goat, and recalls the time, after a childhood illness, when his hair fell out and grew back orange - a phenomenon his doctor attributed to the cultivation of carrots in a neighboring town. The novel charts the decline of a man unraveling due to his own oversensitivity - and drifting closer and closer to committing a murder.