Book Spotlight: Feisengrad by Aaron Richard Golub

Today it is the comedians, but more precisely the social satirists, who speak the truth about our society. Into this vital company comes FEISENGRAD written by Aaron Richard Golub. This comical dystopia of Golub’s imagination puts him in the category of Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell and Douglas Adams – all social critics whose distorted mirrors did much to illuminate the truth about the societies in which they lived.

Golub presents with creative audacity his satirical memoir, FEISENGRAD about life in the mysterious Z. Born from an egg on Monday, Plausible Feisengrad “lands flat-footed in The Z, where seven consecutive days are called a week and no one is safe, spiritual, perfect, knowledgeable or good.” It is a world where food as we know it has been abolished, the working class drive moving carrots, and a newborn is expected to find a job before the day is out.

Ruling The Z are Cops and Umpires, who monitor every action and call violations “safe” or “out” – the latter being the worst fate that can befall ordinary citizens known as plow7s. The rules of The Z are as unknowable and seemingly arbitrary as a baseball game devised by a fevered child. As Feisengrad braves this world, he discovers that there is only one way to remain safe. “Friends, girls and jobs, those are the terms. You will be judged for that and nothing else, and if you do anything wrong to get those things, then The Z Board or the Cops will crush you.” Feisengrad is swallowed by a larger conflict that threatens not just his own existence but the internal harmony of The Z.