A plague driven band of vagabonds and beggars, calling themselves The Shakespeare Company, arrive at the decaying little town of Babylon, where they perform King Lear in a whirl of mayhem and madness. As the night proceeds, they spin out of control, embodied by their roles.
Narrated by the girl Curan, a minor character, this novel is part black comedy, part tragedy, part carnival, and implicitly dystopian. It is a bizarre and disturbing novel of a plague society in social and moray decay. A novel that challenges the reader at every turn.
Erotic, eerie and disturbing, Johnson's novel reinvents the emotional dynamic of Shakespeare's play, as in a distorted mirror. It does not, however, require knowledge of the play to work it's magic as a piece of fiction.
'Johnson makes an original contribution to the literature of disaster, and certainly to the nation's literature that still struggles beneath the mantle of social realism; he does it by the sheer intensity of his poetic vision, combined with an adroit meta-fictional sense...
In this fallen world, does falling matter? Johnson's novel is an exuberant, artful meditation on this question...' David Dowling, Landfall.
'He has achieved a kind of 'worldmaking' that confirms his position as one of New Zealand's most important fiction writers.' Jody Dalgleish, on the novel
Travesty
, Landfall.
'One of the most innovative, original and fearless writers I know.' Witi Ihimaera, on the novel
Stench
.