A River Called Time Contributor(s): Newland, Courttia (Author) |
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ISBN: 1617759260 ISBN-13: 9781617759260 Publisher: Akashic Books OUR PRICE: $26.06 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2021 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Science Fiction - Apocalyptic & Post-apocalyptic - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Disaster |
Dewey: 823.92 |
LCCN: 2020947303 |
Physical Information: 1.6" H x 5.9" W x 9.4" (1.40 lbs) 448 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: A monumental speculative fiction story of love, loyalty, politics, and conscience, set in parallel Londons. Newland...imagines a world where colonialism never happened at all...It's speculative fiction that genuinely made me speculate. A dystopian multiverse imagined at thrilling scale...Extraordinary...The excitement lies largely in its ideas about power and personal responsibility. Newland has produced a text that piques and provokes, providing a guidebook to worlds both uncomfortably familiar and radically new. An immersive speculative novel set in a dystopian city that's facing an uprising. What would London be like if the UK had not colonized half the world? That's the question that drives Courttia Newland's A River Called Time. When young Markriss has the opportunity to move into the Ark--a massive structure that promises a utopian existence for the invited--he takes it, only to find that the world of his dreams isn't as idyllic as he was promised. Part sci-fi, fantasy, and Afro-futurism but not squarely one or the other, A River Called Time transports the reader into a London undone by time, a London of possibility and, necessarily, of new villains. No one can doubt the sheer energy and verve of Newland's vision. This mystical coming-of-age tale...is sure to please fans of thought-provoking speculative fiction. This is an ambitiously imagined book that, by removing the European lens on African cultures, creates a new reality that allows us to question how we view our own. Complex and multilayered, this novel opens the door to the possibilities of noncolonial worlds. A River Called Time is ambitious, sprawling, unpredictable and fascinating...A relentlessly imaginative novel about a world where colonialism and slavery never occurred and yet brutal inequality persists. Courttia Newland is a formidable writer...And his latest work, A River Called Time, is an extraordinary piece of speculative fiction...Newland offers a brilliant remix of history...This may be a work of speculative fiction but its critical lens is present and prescient. The Ark was built to save the lives of the many, but rapidly became a refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning. Years after the Ark was cut off from the world--a world much like our own, but in which slavery has never existed--a chance of survival within the Ark's confines is granted to a select few who can prove their worth. Among their number is Markriss Denny, whose path to future excellence is marred only by a closely guarded secret: without warning, his spirit leaves his body, allowing him to see and experience a world far beyond his physical limitations. Once inside the Ark, Denny learns of another with the same power, whose existence could spell catastrophe for humanity. He is forced into a desperate race to understand his abilities, and in doing so uncovers the truth about the Ark, himself, and the people he thought he once knew. |