Zone 23
A Novel
Will be published approx. on 28. August 2025
Book
Hardback
480 pages
978-1-64821-144-7 (ISBN)
Description
ZONE 23 is a darkly comic dystopian satire about being human, all-too-human, featuring two of the most endearing Anti-Social anti-heroes that ever rebelled against the forces of Normality.
Set in the post-catastrophic future, in a peaceful, prosperous, corporate-controlled society where all dissent and non-conformity has been pathologized, and the human race is being genetically corrected in order to establish everlasting peace on Earth, Zone 23 is a hilarious, heartbreaking affirmation of the anarchic human spirit, and a defiant departure from the norms of both the genre sci-fi and literary novel.
"A brilliant (and hilarious) critique of the emptiness of American life and the meaninglessness of the popular culture that attempts to fill the void."-Toronto Globe & Mail
Set in the post-catastrophic future, in a peaceful, prosperous, corporate-controlled society where all dissent and non-conformity has been pathologized, and the human race is being genetically corrected in order to establish everlasting peace on Earth, Zone 23 is a hilarious, heartbreaking affirmation of the anarchic human spirit, and a defiant departure from the norms of both the genre sci-fi and literary novel.
"A brilliant (and hilarious) critique of the emptiness of American life and the meaninglessness of the popular culture that attempts to fill the void."-Toronto Globe & Mail
Reviews / Votes
Praise for ZONE 23"A big, bold novel that's funny and harrowing and funny again . . . an unflinching portrait of a genetically-modified, fact-checked, sensitivity-edited, corporate-controlled future that feels all too familiar-because we're living in it."
-GAVIN DE BECKER, bestselling author of The Gift of Fear
"Zone 23 is a razor-sharp, painfully hilarious satire on a future society in which authoritarianism rules beneath the mask of peace. It's full of heart, humanity, humour and riotous defiance. As a warning and provocation it sits alongside the literary sci-fi classics by Vonnegut, Bradbury and Pynchon."-EWAN MORRISON, author of For Emma
"[A] witty, nasty, erudite, Pynchonesque narrative, full of fleshed-out sleazy characters and a hyper-detailed alternative world . . . ZONE 23 has a place on a list of several classic dystopian novels that have taken on similar themes."-V. N. Alexander, Dactyl Review
"Zone 23 reads like one of the mind-bending compounds discovered by the infamous, legendary psychopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin -strangely, the book itself is the antidote for the very depression it induces. It's also wildly prophetic, scary, and scabrously funny."-BRUCE WAGNER
Critical Acclaim for the Award-winning Work of C. J. Hopkins
"A brilliant (and hilarious) critique of the emptiness of American life and the meaninglessness of the popular culture that attempts to fill the void." -Toronto Globe & Mail
"A blistering revelation . . . Hopkins' body of work owes a huge debt to the absurdists and so manages to blast beyond the merely political or allegorical to the existential."-Time Out New York
"Sharp, brilliant, intense, fast-moving, made for the moment we live in . . .a portrait of a culture caught in a strange and painful paradox between progressive and reactionary attitudes."-The Scotsman, Edinburgh
"A feral Ferris wheel of comedy, confusion, contradiction, obfuscation and bent-out-of-shape straight talking that leaps out of the room at you and harnesses you to its mischievous mindset."-Metro, UK
"America's relationship with consumerism and the media is unerringly skewered."-The Times, London
"Hilariously at odds with the mainstream, and much bigger and deeper than the sum of its apparent parts."-The Herald, Scotland
"Stimulating and thought-provoking . . . a welcome addition to the canon of all things absurd and beautiful."-The List, Edinburgh
"A gripping satire, which spills into sinister weirdness."-Die Tageszeitung, Berlin
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Skyhorse Publishing
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 40 mm
Weight
698 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64821-144-7 (9781648211447)
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
Person
C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning playwright and political satirist. His early plays and experimental stage-texts were produced during the 1990s in New York City. Since 2001, his plays have been produced and have toured internationally, playing theatres and festivals including Riverside Studios (London), 59E59 Theaters (New York), Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney), Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), the Du Maurier World Stage Festival (Toronto), Needtheater (Los Angeles), 7 Stages (Atlanta), English Theater Berlin, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Brighton Festival, and Noorderzon Festival (the Netherlands). His playwriting awards include the 2002 Best of the Scotsman Fringe Firsts (Horse Country), the 2004 Best of the Adelaide Fringe (Horse Country), and a 2005 Scotsman Fringe First (screwmachine/eyecandy). His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing/Methuen Drama (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. (US). His political satire and commentary has appeared on NPR Berlin, in CounterPunch, ColdType, and other journals, and has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Zone 23 is his debut novel.