FIBBER

by Walker Zupp

A forgotten past, a future history… The Tectum is a giant stone head in the wastelands of England, designed by the government to shelter citizens from a Belgian invasion. Crisis brews when Fibber, a poet-turned-civil-servant, arrives to take charge of the Tectum - typewriters fall out of the walls, whilst a doomed production of Othello is staged on the top floor. As Fibber struggles for control, a group of escapees battle the elements outside, unable to thwart the government’s plans for the Tectum…“A transmutation of Kotlovan, ringing close to the Aki Kaurismaki adaptation of Crime and Punishment. An important piece of modern proletariat story-telling with style.” — Connor de Bruler, author of Hollow Bible“Walker Zupp’s a philosophical novel told in the absurdist tradition, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; Chaucerian; Mad Max deep-fried in DaDa. Fibber the poet turned bureaucrat has been sent to manage a prison contained in a giant head known as the Tectum, and Othello is everywhere you look. Profound, witty, and occasionally sublime, Fibber is nothing if not playful. It teases and taunts, and draws you ever deeper into its maze of mind-bending uncertainty.” — Gabriel Chad Boyer, author of Devil, Everywhere I Look“Fibber is a wild yarn that infuses the suffering of Candide with the wit of Groucho Marx. A lyrical madhouse, a sendup of Russian literature, sharply satirical while maintaining a compelling story. Fibber finds the cosmic joke in our mortality.” — Charis Emanon, author of 51 Ways to End Your World and Azzfapple

228 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2024

Reviews

[Cat Dobson]

This is an exhausting read, and I didn’t complete the book. There is a flickering of something interesting - it’s like an absurdist take on bureaucracy and ethics and ‘The Arts’ - but it reads like a mouthful of Skittles and MnMs eaten simultaneously. I found it incredibly hard to keep track of what was actually happening, because it was like the author was trying to distract me from any inklings of plot with bizarre imagery. There is a character with the body of a chicken and the head of a small boy. At one point a man is trying to start a fire by rubbing together dried potatoes.

There is the occasional funny line (I particularly liked the two prison officers, one who is tall and handsome, and the other one who is also tall and handsome but with terrible teeth) but I would say the whole thing is trying to wedge too many one liners into the narrative. I think it would potentially work a lot better as a screen play; at times I was reminded of ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’, with myself as reader joining the ranks of the utterly confused about what was going on. But as a novel, the plot was entirely hidden from sight.

I picked up the book because the blurb mentioned Othello being a big part of the book, and I usually like stories with in stories. Unfortunately this book held its secrets too tightly for me to understand or appreciate it fully, and I gave up before I could reach Othello.