Reviews

**minor spoilers

The City of Ash and Red is a grim parable in which a man is set upon by circumstances that seem beyond his control, or are they?

The man is a product developer for a rat extermination company who is transferred for training to head office in another country where he doesn't speak the language. When he gets there he is quarantined due to a raging pandemic and is put on leave from work.

He is trapped in the limbo of a foreign country with no communication and nothing to do. When he contacts home he finds out his ex-wife has been murdered and he is the prime suspect.

I was reminded frequently of Kafka's The Trial in its preoccupation with unfathomable bureaucratic processes and events which are seemingly out of the protagonists hands, but it goes to a much darker place.

The pandemic stuff was too close to reality at the the time I read this. Face masks, officials taking people's temperatures, information changing too quickly to keep up with.

kleonard's review against another edition

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1.0

I can't tell if this was supposed to be dismal or absurdist or both. A nameless male protagonist whose work centers around killing pests is sent to work in a similarly unnamed city far from home, where society has crumbled and the city is filled with trash and pestilence. The protagonist should get no sympathy, however, as he's an admitted rapist and abuser, and as his life and the meaning in it spiral away, well, I cared less and less. I think on the surface this is a metaphor for inhumanity, and on a deeper level suggests that everyone is capable of violence. Content warning for rape and other violence.

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