Border State

What was it you said again? You have a strange look in your eyes like abystander observing the world. Youre not French are you?So the letter from one near stra... » 

What was it you said again? You have a strange look in your eyes like abystander observing the world. Youre not French are you?So the letter from one near stranger to another begins and so begins TonuOnnepalus novel of a life lived on the margin where East and West uneasilymeet. At home in neither his native land nor his adopted country the unnamednarrator writes from a border state that transcends national boundaries. Hisletter this novel is a precise depiction of that state of a consciousnessforged by poverty so harsh that even the sunlight is a treasure I come from acountry where the sun is as rare as a diamond an incredible gold coin which isexamined in the light and tested by biting....In the autumn the sun is stashedwith potatoes and rutabagas in cellars.Driven by the need to confess the narrator recounts the circumstancessurrounding the murder of his wealthy male lover. His confession is a painfullysharp rendering of what it means to straddle the lines between East and Westrich and poor light and dark to live flush within a series ofimpoverished dark countries which helplessly bemoan their stillbornhistories.A story of misguided passion Border State offers a rare brilliantly realizedaccount of a lost man in the grip of Western excess emotionally crippled bythe world that is subsuming his own and inhabiting a West in which allcountries have become imaginary deserts of ruins where crowds of nomads roamfrom one attraction to the other. The tale of his journey in whichdisillusion and murder become inextricably linked is a compelling map of thevexed territory between scarcity and surfeit longing and greed lucidityandmadness. «