Black Village
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Tassili, Goodmann, and Myriam. Two men and a woman dressed in rags—former poets, and former members of a dystopian military service—walk the bardo, the dark afterlife between death and rebirth. The road is monotonous and seemingly endless. To pass the time, they decide to tell each other stories: bizarre anecdotes set in a post-apocalyptic world, replete with mutant creatures, Buddhist monks, and ruthless killers. The result is a mysterious, dreamlike series of events, trapped outside of time as we know it, where all the rules of narrative are upended and remade.
Lutz Bassmann is one of the heteronyms of French author Antoine Volodine. Black Village gives readers of science fiction and experimental literature another exciting look into “post-exoticism,” one of the most ambitious and original projects in contemporary literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bassman (We Monks & Soldiers) follows the wanderings of a trio of compatriots through a postapocalyptic world in his inventive latest. Myriam, Tassili, and Goodmann, once poets and theater directors in an unspecified post-Soviet country, live in a world of total darkness. Goodman, the designated fire starter, lines his pockets with tins of black powder and other combustible agents, and lights them periodically to provide brief illumination. Ever observant Myriam, the self-designated leader, encourages the others to concoct fragments of stories based on their hazy memories of the beforetime. Vivid tales of assassins in training and human-sized, talking cormorants, puffins, vultures, and other creatures ensue to a dizzying degree, and, as per Myriam's prompt, are left incomplete. The structure, though reflective of Myriam's abstract theorizing on the nature of storytelling, occasionally feels frustrating, but Bassman can surprise with strange and visceral descriptions (of the ground the characters walk on: "a muddle of dusty rags, scarves and tatters getting twisted around your ankles and dragging you down for hours or days"). Like the characters cast in utter darkness with only glimpses of their surroundings, the several dozen stories they tell one another provide scant insight into the previous world. This is as perplexing as it is engaging.
