Staff Pick
Rampant destitution, unchecked avarice, vermin ferrying sickness from one host to the next as mangy carrion canines scavenge the remains. This is Rodrigo Márquez Tizano's Jakarta, a bile-and-brimstone grotesquerie that deserves to be sold with a surgeon general's warning attached. The rare ultra-bleak vision worthy of being called a dystopia's dystopia. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In a chaotic city, the latest in a line of viruses advances as a man recounts the fated steps that led him to be confined in a room with his lover while catastrophe looms. As he takes inventory of the city's ills, a strange stone distorts reality, offering brief glimpses of the deserted territories of his memory. A sports game that beguiles the city with near-religious significance, the hugely popular gambling systems rigged by the Department of Chaos and Gaming, an upbringing in schools that disappeared classmates even if the plagues didn't--everything holds significance and nothing gives answers in the vision realm of his own making.
The turbulent and sweeping world of Jakarta erupts with engrossing new dystopias and magnetic prose to provide a portrait of a fallen society that exudes both rage and resignation.