検索キーワード： 著者 "Dan Vyleta" すべてのカテゴリー

German-Canadian writer Dan Vyleta, famous for his debut novel Pavel & I which gained international acclaim discusses his latest novel Smoke, which tells an alternate-history of 19th century Britain.

Pavel Richter, a decommissioned GI, finds himself at odds with a rogue British Army colonel and a Soviet general when an American friend deposits a dead Russian spy in his frozen apartment. The race to take possesion of the dead spy's secert soon begins and threatens Pavel's friendship with a street orphan named Anders and his budding love for his upstairs neighbour, Sonia.

Berlin ligger i ruiner. Året er 1946. Det er endnu en af historiens koldeste vintre. Den amerikanske soldat Pavel Richter er af uvisse årsager blevet i den ugudelige by efter krigen. Anders er en tysk gadedreng. Da deres veje krydses, tager Pavel Anders under sine vinger, og sammen forsøger de at overleve i kulden og krigens efterdønninger.

Welcome to a world where every desire is visible, rising from the body as a plume of Smoke. A world where bodies speak to one another and infect each other with desire, anger, greed. It is 1909, and this world stands on a precipice - some celebrate this constant whisper of skin to skin, and some seek to silence it forever. Enter Eleanor, a young woman with a strange power over Smoke and niece of the Lord Protector of England. Running from her uncle and home, she finds shelter in a New York theatre troupe.

Smoke opens in a private boarding school near Oxford, but history has not followed the path known to us. In this other past, sin is a physical attribute, visible to all, and children are born carrying the seeds of evil within them. It is in this school, surrounded by the sons of the wealthy and well connected, that two boys called Thomas and Charlie discover that the world of smoke, soot and ash is not as it seems, for sin has a secret history and virtue a politics both intricate and murderous.

Vienna, 1948: The war is over, and as the initial phase of denazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amid the rubble. Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier upon discovering her husband’s infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerland is 18-year-old Robert Seidel, a schoolboy summoned home to his stepfather’s sickbed and the secrets of his family’s past.

The year is 1909. It has been 10 years since Thomas Argyle, Charlie Cooper, and Livia Naylor set off a revolution by releasing Smoke upon the world. They were raised to think Smoke was a sign of sin manifested, but learned its suppression was really a means of controlling society. Smoke allowed people to mingle their emotions, to truly connect, and the trio thought that freeing the Smoke would bring down the oppressive power structure and create a fair and open society. But the consequences were far greater than they had imagined, and the world has fractured.

Welcome to a Victorian England unlike any other you have experienced before. Here, wicked thoughts (both harmless and hate-filled) appear in the air as telltale wisps of Smoke. Young Thomas Argyle, a son of aristocracy, has been sent to an elite boarding school. Here, he will be purged of Wickedness, for the wealthy do not Smoke.