Black Village

Tassili, Goodmann, and Myriam. Two men and a woman dressed in rags—former poets, and former members of a dystopian military service—walk the bardo, the dark afterlife between death and rebirth. The road is monotonous and seemingly endless. To pass the time, they decide to tell each other stories: bizarre anecdotes set in a post-apocalyptic world, replete with mutant creatures, Buddhist monks, and ruthless killers. The result is a mysterious, dreamlike series of events, trapped outside of time as we know it, where all the rules of narrative are upended and remade.

Lutz Bassmann is one of the heteronyms of French author Antoine Volodine. Black Village gives readers of science fiction and experimental literature another exciting look into “post-exoticism,” one of the most ambitious and original projects in contemporary literature.