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Year of the Rat
Marc Anthony Richardson (Author)
9781573660570
Paperback / softback, published 27 September 2016
240 pages, 7 B&W figures
21.3 x 13.9 x 1.7 cm, 0.304 kg
—Micheline Aharonian Marcom, author of Three Apples Fell from Heaven and The Mirror in the Well
—Carolina De Robertis, author of The Invisible Mountain and The Gods of Tango
In Year of the Rat, an artist returns to the dystopian city of his birth to tend to his invalid mother, only to find himself torn apart by memories and longings. Narrated by this nameless figure whose rants, reveries, and Rabelaisian escapades take him on a Dantesque descent into himself, the story follows him and his mother as they share a one-bedroom apartment over the course of a year. Despite his mother’s precarious health, the lingering memories of a lost love, an incarcerated sibling, a repressed sexuality, and an anarchic inability to support himself, he pursues his dream of becoming an avant-garde artist. His prospects grow dim until a devastating death provides a painful and unforeseeable opportunity. With a voice that is poetic and profane, ethereal and irreverent, cyclical and succinct, he roams from vignette to vignette, creating a polyphonic patchwork quilt of a family portrait.