In the City of Pigs
Will be published approx. on 25. August 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-1-4597-4908-5 (ISBN)
Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE
A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal.
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he's ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city - until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal.
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he's ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city - until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Reviews / Votes
Funny, mysterious, completely unpredictable, and never didactic. * Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time * Subtle, insistent, and adroit, Forget eroticizes art's decay under capitalism with stunning intelligence. This is an essential novel. * Paige Cooper, author of Zolitude * Forget's intimacy with the finest details of music may remind fans of writer Daniel Silva. A first-class read; a little enlightenment is a bonus. * Winnipeg Free Press * A detailed, sharply intellectual exploration of how people use and abuse art, while at the same time communicating the obsession and the intoxication that art offers for those who cannot live without it. * Miramichi Reader *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
419 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4597-4908-5 (9781459749085)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Andre Forget was born in Toronto and raised in Mount Forest, Ontario. He is the former editor-in-chief of the Puritan, and his work has appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers in Canada and the United States. He currently lives in Sheffield in the United Kingdom.