Absinth

Seb Doubinsky is a French bilingual writer, born in 1963 in Paris. He has published more than 15 novels and 6 poetry collections in France, the UK and the USA. His fiction can be seen as a mosaic of different styles and subjects, although it is always centered on the questions of freedom and identity. He currently lives and teaches in Aarhus, in Denmark, with his wife and their two children.

Doubinsky has a lot of fun, satirising contemporary events, riffing on news stories, dropping in odd sometimes offbeat sometimes nonsensical asides that help give you a sense of a world going to hell in a handcart. No wonder Hermes and his Godlike buddies are seeing signs, you think. We’re seeing them too, in the shape of slow motion tornados, free floating Mickey Mouse figures, mad spurts of spontaneous human combustion, advertising jingles from God (who, in the midst of many Gods, is we imagine the one God, the Christian God – you may not be surprised to learn he has nothing very much to say), random green spots in the desert, random visitations from historical figures (and objects), black female paramilitary groups and cancelled World Cups. It’s no understatement to say that there is all manner of craziness in Absinth. --- Bookmunch