Belt and Roadkill: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LQBJ5N3
paperback https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LGNP95Z
Belt and Roadkill Is Tale of UN Corruption By China With Dark Comedy, Series Launched
Literary Reflection, Book
NEW YORK CITY, Nov 12 – What is a novel? How long should it be? How corrupt is the United Nations? What is the line between real world injustice and fiction, black comedy?
A just published novella, "Belt and Roadkill," raises these questions.
The corruption of the UN, its documented domination by China as evidenced by two recent real-world bribery prosecutions in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, are the soil or message of the text. But the meta questions about what is a novel(la) is raised by its form and length. (It is available, first on Kindle, here).
Earlier this month Parul Sehgal in The New Yorker bemoaned the democratization of literature, or content, by Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing. But who are the gatekeepers? Who should they be?
The author of Belt and Roadkill, years ago, was on the threshold of elite / elitist publishing, summoned to a venerable firm on Union Square in Manhattan and told that if only the actual names of Citigroup's predatory lenders could be dropped, it might be possible to move forward.
But aren't public figures open to satire, without danger of libel lawsuits?
Aren't those Predatory Benders who foreclose on thousands of homes just targets, like those at the UN who cover up hundreds of rapes by peacekeepers, and ten thousand Haitians killed by cholera, as only two examples?
Belt and Roadkill does not mention Haiti, even once. It does, however, name-check Cameroon and Western Sahara, Huawei and the January 6, 2021 insurrection, breach or protest, whatever your politics.
SCENE OF THE CRIME(S) - @SDNYLIVE and Chatham Square in Chinatown, locales in "Belt and Roadkill" dramatizing UN bribery by CEFC China Energy, UN impunity, cases of Michael Randall Long, series launch