2007 books

104) Jean-Euphèle Milcé, Alphabet of the Night, 2004
After the murder of his lover on his doorstep in Port-au-Prince ("God chose this town to test out his concept of Hell") a Jewish shop owner wonders whether exile from Haiti might be his only option, and he goes in search of a missing friend with help from a shady revolutionary and a voodoo priest. There are distinct layers of reality to life in Haiti, from the country's long legacy of political corruption to the magically strange afterlife that pervades and influences a Haitian's daily existence, and into this Assaël brings his own baggage as a gay Wandering Jew. At times the plot plays a definite second fiddle to the harshness of both Assaël's cultural history and that of everyday life in Haiti, though it picks up speed and broadens its scope towards the end in a strangely satisfying way.

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Very Happy Birthday to sbisson.

2007 books

105) James Morrow, City of Truth, 1990
The 1992 Nebula-winning novella that james_morrow expanded from his short story 'Veritas'. Morrow has never really caught on here in the UK... more's the pity. City of Truth depicts the utopian city Veritas, where lying and anything less than complete honesty has been conditioned out of human communication, while it is under seige from the rebel 'dissemblers' of the hidden city of Satirev. Jack Sperry believes he must go from a ridiculous extreme to an absurd one as he learns to lie in an attempt to save his young son from a fatal disease. Morrow's notable wit, very prominent in the first half, is gradually replaced by a sadness that shows how neither extreme of truth or untruth is ideal. A very good if rather implausible satire, and one that favourably compares with Vonnegut in Morrow's exploration of the ridiculous.