Paperback, 222 pages
English language
Published Nov. 22, 2021 by AK Press.
Dimos Horacki is a Borolian journalist and a cynical patriot, his muckraking days behind him. But when his newspaper ships him to the front, he’s embedded in the Imperial Army and the reality of colonial expansion is laid bare before him. His adventures take him from villages and homesteads to the great refugee city of Hronople, built of glass, steel, and stone, all while a war rages around him. The empire fights for coal and iron, but the anarchists of Hron fight for their way of life. A Country of Ghosts is a novel of utopia besieged that challenges every premise of contemporary society.
I always enjoy Margaret's writing. This was a quick and enjoyable read that, for all its brevity, still managed to expand my mind.
( em português → sol2070.in/2025/01/livro-a-country-of-ghosts/ )
"A Country of Ghosts" (2014), by Margaret Killjoy, is a delightful dystopian/utopian novel, especially appealing to anti-authoritarians readers.
It’s a political fantasy set in an alternate world approximately at the beginning of its industrial revolution. A colonial, expansionist military power invades a mountainous region to exploit its resources, knowing little about its inhabitants. They are deemed primitive, simplistic, and violently resistant to the incursion — people to be exterminated or enslaved.
We follow a journalist assigned to cover the conflict. Embedded with the troops, they soon discover that the local people are far more politically, culturally, and combatively sophisticated than presumed. The region is a free, autonomous confederation — a living anarchist utopia.
While it’s not so uncommon to find anarchist elements in dystopian or utopian fiction, when the author herself is an anarchist, the portrayal becomes much more vivid. Great examples include "The …
( em português → sol2070.in/2025/01/livro-a-country-of-ghosts/ )
"A Country of Ghosts" (2014), by Margaret Killjoy, is a delightful dystopian/utopian novel, especially appealing to anti-authoritarians readers.
It’s a political fantasy set in an alternate world approximately at the beginning of its industrial revolution. A colonial, expansionist military power invades a mountainous region to exploit its resources, knowing little about its inhabitants. They are deemed primitive, simplistic, and violently resistant to the incursion — people to be exterminated or enslaved.
We follow a journalist assigned to cover the conflict. Embedded with the troops, they soon discover that the local people are far more politically, culturally, and combatively sophisticated than presumed. The region is a free, autonomous confederation — a living anarchist utopia.
While it’s not so uncommon to find anarchist elements in dystopian or utopian fiction, when the author herself is an anarchist, the portrayal becomes much more vivid. Great examples include "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin and "The Fifth Sacred Thing" by Starhawk.
Described as a story in the tradition of Le Guin (and Sherri S. Tepper), the work is also an epic about war — the destructive oppression against freedom in its purest form.
Killjoy writes the best anarchist newsletter/blog ( margaretkilljoy.substack.com/ ) I know and is an exemplary storyteller, especially in queer libertarian fantasy. I’m eager to read her acclaimed latest novel: "The Sapling Cage" (2024).
it is still a story of war, but i like the attempt of showing how a "country" following anrchist principles might look like. this scenario, although fantasy, is much closer to us that the alien and very pragmatica annares (sorry, le guin, but that's true).
A well-constructed world with real though put into how societies could construct themselves differently, and how they would interact if they did.
