Audrey Szasz — Zealous Immaculate

Amphetamine Sulphate

£28.78

Format: Book
Catalogue No.: 9781953559043
Barcode: 9781953559043
Release Date: 29 Apr 2022

Hardcover, 214 pages. Signed by the author. A major novel of perversity and pleasure from a richly exciting new literary talent. Apparently orphaned in a foreign land engulfed by civil war, Tamara finds herself in an isolated and notoriously mismanaged home for abandoned children. Initially unable to comprehend the local language, she attempts to communicate nonverbally, having seemingly lost the faculty of speech. Unaware of her parents’ true whereabouts – or whether in fact they are even alive – Tamara struggles to make herself understood and to survive in this alien environment where chaos reigns and brutality – or sheer indifference – unfortunately appears to be the norm. A sinister cast of characters duly appears, including the glamorous but corrupt Director, her overbearingly sadistic partner the Doctor, not to mention the Father – a perverse cleric with a penchant for cruelty – amongst other unsavoury and remorseless individuals, all enforcing a strict hierarchy between the adults and the children (and thus the perpetrators and the victims of institutionalised violence). Meanwhile, a number of different voices or alters jostle for psychic dominance over Tamara’s internal narrative; through various temporal shifts, rotations and leaps in chronological perspective our heroine’s journey – both geographical and psychological – is described in a disintegrating arc of obscure recollections, fragmented diary entries and increasingly obscene erotic fantasies. Conversely, these kaleidoscopic projections, delirious daydreams and compulsive diatribes gradually accumulate to articulate a traumatised inner topography that mirrors the devasted and desolate external landscape of a perpetual war zone....