Ubo

Daniel is trapped in Ubo. He has no idea how long he has been imprisoned there by the roaches. Every resident has a similar memory of the journey: a dream of dry, chitinous wings crossing the moon, the gigantic insects dropping swiftly over the houses; the creatures, like a deck of baroquely ornamented cards, fanning themselves from one hidden world into the next. Each day they force Daniel to play a different figure from humanity’s violent history, from a frenzied Jack the Ripper to a stumbling and confused Stalin, to a self-proclaimed god executing survivors atop the ruins of the world. As skies burn and prisoners go mad, identities dissolve as the experiments evolve, and no one can foretell their mysterious end.

“A nightmarish fantasy in which the protagonist is abducted from his bed by monstrous insects and brought to a world where he is forced to inhabit the consciousnesses of history’s great villains. An exploration of the problem of (human) evil, Tem’s narrative cuts to the bone with the brute efficiency of a meat cleaver; it’s a reminder of his continuing ambition as a writer, decades into a career whose achievement is already considerable.” – John Langan in Locus

“When you mix the ‘I want to shoot myself’ grim tone of McCarthy’s The Road, with the political concepts and sheer ‘what the fuck is real?’ of Philip K Dick, you earn the word masterpiece.” – David Agranoff, Amazing Stories