Toronto-based authors André Forget and Naben Ruthnum come together to examine the seemingly well-intentioned, but often insidious, narratives of so-called progress that permeate our modern times. In Forget’s latest novel, In the City of Pigs, failed musician Alexander is determined to prove himself as a journalist. When he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective, he winds up chasing answers ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals and finance capitalism. Ruthnum’s Hero of Our Time examines the veneer of racial conversations in the West, exposing the venomous self-congratulation and devouring lust for wealth and power lurking beneath.
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A failed musician obsessed with avant-garde art enters a shadowy world where bohemian excess meets the avaricious interests of a real estate cabal.
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he’s ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city — until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.