Volodine, Antoine - The Monroe Girls

For readers of Thomas Pynchon, a conspiratorial adventure through a bleak future where the dead (and their political factions) never really die, from one of France’s most visionary writers Breton has seen brighter days. He peers from the grimy window of a near-empty psychiatric compound—one of the last buildings standing after an unspecified disaster. Into this world of devastation drop the Monroe girls—paramilitaries trained in the “dark place” by Monroe, a dissident executed long ago. Their mission to revamp the Party is futile in this bleak, decaying world. Breton, our schizophrenic narrator, is tasked (and tortured) by what remains of the Party to locate and identify the Monroe girls using special optical equipment and his powers of extrasensory perception. Breton’s journey through a bardo-like, hostile labyrinth invites us into a sensual swirl of bodily decay, political acquiescence, and civilizational collapse.