Unsteady Earth

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HIS FATHER STILL warm in the grave, Bartholomé de Ménibus leaves his traditional farming village in a bucolic valley and sets out to discover what lies behind the only mountain he has ever known: endless other mountains. Behind each, fantastical Swiftian worlds inhabited by Quixotic characters all convinced that their lifestyle is the only way to face the future. Dairy cows with portholes sewn into their rumps offer consumers 'a window on the product'; elderly folk are abandoned by the roadside as their families drive on through traffic jams to holiday destinations; pigs are farmed in 125-storey skyscrapers. In this quirky, satirical novel, sparkling with surreal humour and inventiveness, Marie-Jeanne Urech adopts the codes of epic medieval quests and epistolary tales of the past as she skips lightly but purposefully towards the essential question: What kind of Earth are we leaving for future generations?