Translating the planet-annihilating outcomes of intergalactic warfare from Douglas Adams’s Vogons—a spoof of town councils’ urban planning—to a spoof of Eurovision forces this novel to pick a very delicate path through European war memory itself.
These nine fantastical stories talk about the magic present in relationships, and how sometimes others misinterpret either the relationship, the magic, or both.
“Since Imagine Africa, I’ve been working on my next novel. What I’ve been stewing about, being adamant about, is that we are allowed to write about South African culture; and fuck the Western reader, I am writing for an audience here.”
“I don’t think anybody believes they are racists but there are signs and these traces of it in everything that we do. Our entire culture is set up like that. Which … which sucks. But it is like that.”
This novel isn’t quite a standard piece of science fiction. It’s more a futuristic kind of myth, a speculative fabulation, a knowing entry in the long-running story Irish literature has told about itself.
