Absinth by Seb Doubinsky

In Absinth, you'll meet three main characters trying to figure out their life on the backdrop of the upcoming Apocalypse: Iris, a fortune-teller who cannot see not the future but weirdly anachronistic versions of the past; Sid Saperstein, a shameless huckster chosen to publish a sacred manuscript whose message will shake heaven and earth alike; Hermes, the Greek messenger god, dispatched by Zeus to sound out his fellow deities, still smarting from the licking they took two thousand years ago, on how best to take advantage of the coming changes, whatever they may be. And also God Himself, whose enigmatic voice addresses us throughout the novel in the contemporary koans of advertising lingo.

Seb Doubinsky is a French bilingual writer, born in 1963 in Paris. He has published more than 15 novels and 6 poetry collections in France, the UK and the USA. His fiction can be seen as a mosaic of different styles and subjects, although it is always centered on the questions of freedom and identity. He currently lives and teaches in Aarhus, in Denmark, with his wife and their two children.

Doubinsky has a lot of fun, satirising contemporary events, riffing on news stories, dropping in odd sometimes offbeat sometimes nonsensical asides that help give you a sense of a world going to hell in a handcart. No wonder Hermes and his Godlike buddies are seeing signs, you think. We're seeing them too, in the shape of slow motion tornados, free floating Mickey Mouse figures, mad spurts of spontaneous human combustion, advertising jingles from God (who, in the midst of many Gods, is we imagine the one God, the Christian God - you may not be surprised to learn he has nothing very much to say), random green spots in the desert, random visitations from historical figures (and objects), black female paramilitary groups and cancelled World Cups. It's no understatement to say that there is all manner of craziness in Absinth. --- Bookmunch