Counterillumination

by Audrey Szasz

The Story of Z. A witty and extravagant erotic classic for the 21st Century.

Audrey Szasz’s third novel is her most ambitious trip yet. A 400 page psychic assault course journeying through the delirious present and harrowed hellscapes of futures past. This truly encyclopaedic outsider vision of ecstasy and, until now, unimaginable horror will surely warp your pretty little mind forever. But you love it really, don’t you. So come on, don’t be late. Take a chance with us. The train is about to leave…

Genres: Fiction

386 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2023

About the author

Instagram: @szasz_audrey

Reviews

[bimbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Have you turned off the water supply at the mains? Have you ever pulled out your stitches? Have you ever checked your survival kit? Have you ever wondered, I mean, really wondered what the point of existence is? Have you done any minor repairs, to keep out the weather? Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you. Do you really believe that life has no meaning? Have you ever recreated parts of your programming? Has a red stain in the shape of Baphomet ever appeared in your underwear? Have you ever tried scrubbing blood out of a hotel bedsheet at four in the morning with a toothbrush and a tiny bat of soap? Have you ever gone round with them? Have you ever been trapped in a car with your obsessive-compulsive mother and forced to drive through the Waikato listening to NZ's worst garbage music for export only?”

[Thomas Hale · Rating 2 out of 5]

A deliberately jarring and nasty novel combining stories of psychiatric institutionalisation, BDSM, Nazi concentration camps, and pop music into a headache-inducing sludge. At the core of the book, Szasz blends the lives and psychologies of two troubled young women: an abstracted version of herself (troubled, abuse survivor, obsessed with Crowded House) and a fictionalised Irma Grese (brutal, sadistic SS officer) to explore ideas of femininity, power, identity, cruelty, the banality of evil...and then the book keeps going for another two hundred pages after everything that could have been done was done. In the latter half there is more and more fixation on the Grese narrative, with extensive word-salad monologues about beauty and power and the joy of inflicting horrible cruelty upon the no-longer-human.
Maybe the exhaustion on reading page after page of Holocaust atrocities - to the point where they totally lost their sting - was a deliberate choice, to mimic Grese's total normalisation of the violence she revels in. Maybe it was just to overwhelm the reader with yet another four-page paragraph about shiny leather boots and starvation and gas chambers. I was mostly just very bored by the end, which is a shame because there is definitely something here. Elsewhere Szasz includes minor threads of alien abduction memories, child abuse, different aspects of the protagonist's personality holding forth in debates with each other, the unmooring of her identity as her family ships her around the world, alienation, horrible abuse of power. But in the last chapters I just kept thinking how sloppy and repetitive it felt, and how I wished it was half the length it is.

[Ben Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deviant history lesson that will reorganize your mind by the end. Enter a surreal world of perverse power dynamics and mass manipulation. Irma Grese, alien abductees, kink films, and Crowded House all merge in this nasty descent into psychosis.
It’s ecstatic and erotic. Alien and human.
A truly unique literary experience that pushes the boundaries of literature and language to awe-inspiring places.

[Bon Nandre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not much to add but I think it could be just a tad shorter. The nazi stuff especially starts to get repetitive (probably a conscious strategy). Haven't really come across anything quite like this however so...

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt less of a novel and something more akin to 3 or so thematic manuscripts shuffled together into one big whole, but there really is something to Audrey Szasz's writing. It doesn't make you feel good, yet it's hard pull away from. Can't say I enjoyed it as much as i was enthralled with the time spent. It does borders on exhaustive at times. A little of Irma's narcissism goes a long way. It's definitely enough to make me want to explore all of Szasz's work now.

[Jennifer Huggins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everywhere you go always take the weather with you

[Jennifer Greidus · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been a few years since I’ve had to set a book aside so I can reset my senses watching Golden Girls with my grandpa. Queasy. Going to read more Szasz soon, however.

[Horrorautist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Potentially the greatest piece of transgressive fiction this decade

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A frightening obstacle course of shuffling personae all addressing the reader from the letter “I” — I haven’t read any other Audrey Szasz but I’m sure if I read anything else by her I’ll feel I’m just as much in the clutches of a literary maniac. There’s a lot of range between the dark effervescence of the poetic sections and the heavily researched and grinding horror of the concentration camp ventriloquism. I could have done with a little less Holocaust and a little more morbidly witty monologues from the apparent now. But I respect the compositional choices in this legitimately scary, psychopathic novel.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Counterillumination is that most thrilling thing, the work of a young writer at the very peak of her powers. Traversing eras and worldviews, the book can be digested as a lurid mind-control experiment or as a history lesson planted shamelessly on the wrong side. Dunno how Audrey Szasz might top such a mighty achievement but I for one cannot wait to find out.