The Abdication - A True Ero(t)icomic Epic

May 22, 2012 - PRLog -- CONTRA MUNDUM PRESS

PRESENTS

ONE OF THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL NOVELS OF OUR TIME


THE ABDICATION


With the appearance of his first novel, *The Acolytes,* early readers professed that Hanshe gave promise of becoming a truly important writer. With his second, *The Abdication,* Keith Ansell-Pearson attests that “Hanshe reinforces his growing reputation as one of today's most original and thought-provoking novelists."

Spring 2032: an enigmatic bandleader named Triboulet arrives by helicopter in Rome, where his carnivalesque troupe awaits with a legion of animals and unruly kids. When provoking states of joyous panic through their ritualistic frenzies, the troupe’s arrival proves restorative, for the world is beset with famines, plagues, and religious conflicts, which Triboulet seeks to neutralize with freeing laughter. As he and his troupe begin constructing strange edifices in the Eternal City, sacred sites around the world suffer terrible, often beguiling forms of vandalism, and rumors abound that the Christ has actually finally returned.

Although radical Islamic sects claim responsibility for the vandalism, the culprits remain unknown: is it the Jihadists, anarcho-atheist intellectuals, or eco-terrorists? Religious and political authorities grow leery of the troupe and suspicious of Triboulet, whose true identity remains a mystery. The very future of the world is at stake, and while touring Israel during Christmas, Triboulet and his raucous band of pranksters bear witness to the world’s pivotal crossing into a new reality.

Albert Camus noted that ‘the metaphysics of the worst’ expresses itself in a literature of damnation and argued that ‘we have still not yet found the exit’ from such literature. With his second novel, Hanshe has found the way out, offering in fact something not only promising, but astounding, a pathway that is into a new reality, into a ‘physics of the best.’ *The Abdication* is a true ero(t)icomic epic.


ENCOMIUMS

“*The Abdication* is a visionary novel of dangerous ideas, a theological thriller concerned with the absence of god and the question posed by the phrase: Dionysus versus the Crucified. As well argued as it is intricately arcane, indeed dense with learning and lore, this book is both experimental and assured, a comedy of high seriousness and gospel of the flesh that our winded civilization has needed for 2,000 years. Ridendo dicere severum!”—Stuart Kendall, author of Georges Bataille

“Hanshe's phantasmagoric and cunning prose eviscerates accreted mythologies while revealing the tragedy attendant on the death and births of gods. Its controversial premises will enrage and provoke many, but the quality and elegance of the writing will amaze all."—Nicholas Birns, author of Theory After Theory


BOOK INFO

Rainer J. Hanshe, The Abdication (New York: Contra Mundum Press, 2012). ISBN: 9780983697220. 20 USD, 16 GBP, 14€. Bookstores can order through Ingram or other distributors. Otherwise, copies can be acquired through local retailers or Amazon and similar sites worldwide. For a review, desk copy, or interview request, write to: info@contramundum.net


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