Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat

Aurorarama

Jean-Christophe Valtat

New Venice is as magnetic as the North Pole it circles: a city state, part fevered fin-de-siecle party, part political tinder-box - an exiled utopia, and an iced-over pressure cooker. This is an overwhelming blizzard of a book, battering the reader with the delirious logic of dreams and the baroque architecture of its prose, blasting you with crisis upon crisis - those of the heart, of the state, of society, of reality itself.

Extract
Gabriel, casting a look dark enough to snuff out a candle, put down his glass, took the folder and browsed through it, his life passing in front of his eyes as if he were a drowning man. Everything, from his résumé and professional activities to his less official occupations, had been duly recorded and archived, including his (extremely rare) forays into 'poletics' and his (more numerous) sexual proclivities and episodes of drug abuse.
Parallels
  • The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G W Dahlquist
  • The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar
  • Embassytown by China Miéville