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From celebrated Quebecois author Bertrand Laverdure comes Universal Bureau of Copyrights , a bold, strange and addictive story that envisions a world where free will doesn't exist, and an enigmatic global corporation buys and sells the copyrights for all things on Earth, including ... Read more
From celebrated Quebecois author Bertrand Laverdure comes Universal Bureau of Copyrights , a bold, strange and addictive story that envisions a world where free will doesn't exist, and an enigmatic global corporation buys and sells the copyrights for all things on Earth, including real and fictional characters. Through this novel, which is part poetic narrative, part sci-fi-dystopian fantasy, readers become acquainted with the main character, a man who deconstructs himself as he navigates the mystifying passages of the story. Having no control over his environment, time continuum, or body, he is a puppet on strings, an icon in a video game and, as he eventually discovers within the bowels of the Universal Bureau of Copyrights, the object of countless copyrights. With touches of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Universal Bureau of Copyrights packs a multitude of modern cultural references into an audacious exploration of identity and one's place in the world.
"Laverdure's clever commentary on identity, ownership, and control keeps us guessing right up to the end."
- The Times Literary Supplement
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Today's story-behind-a-story is Hallowe'en perfect: author Jon R. Flieger shares the inspiration behind the funeral services workers who staff his latest novel You Are Among Monsters (Palimpsest Press). After many conversations with a mortician friend fresh to the profession, ... Read more
When we heard that author-translator dream team Bertrand Laverdure and Oana Avasilichioaei (of the strange and meta narrative Universal Bureau of Copyrights) were pairing up again for Readopolis (BookThug), the English version of Laverdure's Lectodôme, we couldn't ... Read more
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All of the call-outs we make in our Character Study collage this week are (c), the Universal Bureau of Copyrights. Check out the perils of a dystopia where everything is owned, and their violent impact on the book's protagonist, below.
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