City of Rats

Welcome to the gutters of 1970s Paris - and the transgressive, darkly comic world of City of Rats.<BR><BR>When pet rat Gouri finds himself locked out of his owner's apartment, he has no choice but to strike out alone onto the pavements of Paris. But what begins as a strange and marvellous bedtime story - Gouri and his new friend Raka selling flour-coated worms to pigeons for spare change - soon spirals into an exhilarating whirlwind of murder, sex, unionised hamsters, courtroom drama, and, finally, Armageddon.<BR><BR>Told through a series of letters from Gouri to Argentinian playwright Copi, City of Rats channels Copi's lifelong fascination with society's outcasts - queer people, immigrants, the homeless - into a fiercely imaginative, unflinchingly provocative tale of a world hurtling into madness.<BR><BR>'The greatest miniaturist of our age... Copi was a man of the Baroque, a Shakespeare, magically reincarnated in gay Paris' Cesar Aira<BR><BR>'Decadent, poised, unpredictable, violent, galling, and marvellous' Charlie Hebdo<BR><BR>TRANSLATED BY KIT SCHLUTER; WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CESAR AIRA