Synopses & Reviews
Williams Burroughs meets Philip K. Dick in this dystopian drug-fueled novel set in the not-so-distant future.Synth is a drug able to induce hallucinations indistinguishable from reality. But its brand new, highly addictive, and more than likely dangerous. Even the dealers peddling the pills dont know what long term effects the drug will have on its users. For Markus Olsen, Synth offers an easy escape to his crumbling life. Markus, an ex-hacker, has been caught red-handed, and while his friends were sent to jail for thirty years, Markus decided to cooperate, agreeing to lend his services and particular criminal expertise to Viborg Citys secret service, aiding the oppressive state power hed been fighting to break in exchange for his relative freedom.
But Markus past as an anarchist comes back to haunt him, in the form of a credit card with no account but an seemingly unlimited balance as well as the discovery of a mysterious novel in which he is a main character. How much of his reality is being produced by Synth? How disconnected from real life has Markus become? Forced to face his past and the decisions hes made, Markus must decide to choose between the artificial comfort of his constructed life and the harsh reality of treason and the struggle for freedom.
Review
Seb Doubinsky is a great writer, both rambunctious and subtle, who can do anythingand often does, playing with genres and literary conventions at will. Read his work. Read this book.”
Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times-bestselling author of the Southern Reach Trilogy
Doubinsky's dark, drug-soaked fable will remind American readers of Philip K. Dick. . . at once gritty and dreamlike, somber and sexy, this is a powerful tale of guilt, addiction, and self-discovery.”
Publishers Weekly
A science fiction novel that explores a personal odyssey through the process of detox and rehab, a kind of Pilgrim's Progress for the narcotized.”
Lucius Shepard, author of The Jaguar Hunter
Doubinsky owes something to Burroughsnot only in the sly ironies and anarchies of his style but in the mix of highly analytical intelligence and unrestrained imagination he brings to his work. Like Burroughs, hes a cold-blooded satirist with the sensibility of a poet.”
Paul Witcover, author of Waking Beauty and Dracula: Asylum
About the Author
Seb Doubinsky is a bilingual French writer, born in Paris in 1963. He has published a number of novels and poetry collections in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. He currently lives in Aarhus, Denmark, with his wife and their two children.