The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad is a comic

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

and social satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

written by Edmonton, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

writer and activist Malcolm Azania

Malcolm Azania

Malcolm Azania , also known as Minister Faust , is a Canadian teacher, writer, community activist, radio host and political aspirant....

under the pen name

Pen name

A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

of "Minister Faust". His first book, it received major international release in August 2004 by the publisher Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

.

Unconventionally, the novel is told from eleven points of view

Point of view (literature)

The narrative mode is the set of methods the author of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical story uses to convey the plot to the audience. Narration, the process of presenting the narrative, occurs because of the narrative mode...

employing distinct first-person narrative voices. Set in Edmonton in 1995, it follows two main characters: Hamza, Sudanese-Canadian former honours English student working as a dishwasher, and Yehat, a Trinidadian-Canadian, a video store clerk and inventor. Hamza is also a Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

, although his faith is somewhat in crisis. Stuck in a rut, their lives are going nowhere until a mysterious woman shows up, seduces Hamza and draws the two into a quest for a magic artifact.

"Minister Faust brings [The Coyote Kings] alive in a jumpy, hold-nothing-back style," wrote Gerald Jonas in the New York Times Book Review. "Faust anatomizes [the Edmonton setting] with the same loving care Joyce brought to early-20th-century Dublin.... Faust's debut novel is a fresh and stylish entertainment."

"With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd," wrote reviewer Rick Klaw

Rick Klaw

Richard Ira "Rick" Klaw , is an American editor, essayist, and bookseller.-Biography:Rick Klaw is the paternal grandson of Irving Klaw, the photographer and film maker most noted for his bondage photos of Bettie Page. In 1979, the family relocated to Houston, Texas...

in the Austin Chronicle
Austin Chronicle
The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly, tabloid-style newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic...

, "it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

to write a Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...

novel."

Reviews

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