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Alex Kurtagic's Mister
Review by Edmund Connelly

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This Hobbesian sense of war of all against all never leaves us in the novel, which at 531 pages means the reader feels like he has dragged himself into the 23rd inning and still faces the prospect of more. Or, as Kurtagic noted in an interview with Sunic, it was meant to show “a process of strangulation” that would “overwhelm the reader.” That it does — in spades.

As mentioned, the central character is a shallow man, confusing fundamentally important things with superficial social standing and attire. Obsessed with brand-name clothing, Mister prides himself on his Gieves and Hawkes grey chalkstripe suit and sneers at those who possess less. Further, he appears clueless to the fact that the social norms operant in the recent past have little sway in the multi-racial, multicultural world of 2022.

Thus, when he is at first denied boarding of his flight, he bellows:

You did not follow correct procedure. You have not made the proper announcements, so the flight is not closed. So, please, log back on, swipe my boarding pass, check my passport, and let me through!… I paid for a service and you are refusing to provide it. If you do not let me through, I will make a formal complaint and sue British Airways for breach of contract.

While such threats from a “serious man” are successful this time, they appear comic once Mister has arrived in Madrid, the site of perpetual confirmation that nature is indeed red in tooth and claw. For now, however, he finds his seat back at Heathrow. Sad to say, his discomfort has only begun, for, as Kurtagic portrays, Mister is about to endure the assault on civilized senses that modern air travel has become.

One of 853 passengers, Mister shares his row in œconomy (Kurtagic favors archaic English spellings) with “a colourfully attired Afro-Caribbean woman, holding a crying infant on one of her prodigious mammaries, which rested on her giant thigh,” and an obese Chinese student who vomits into his airsickness bag before the plane has ever left the gate.

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