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Mister by Alex Kurtagic
Review by Troy Southgate

Kurtagic's novel is a horrifying travelogue in which readers are confronted with an excruciatingly detailed glimpse of a revoltingly claustrophobic future where current socio-economic and judicial trends are hurled ferociously towards a penultimately cataclysmic and devastating climax. It's a world in which the most grotesque Benetton poster has spilled its guts all over the street and where the kind of degenerative societies portrayed in William Pierce's The Turner Diaries and Colin Jordan's Merrie England seem rather tame by comparison. The interrogation scenes are beautifully constructed, too, a textual minefield that hints at the authoritarian tête-à-tête confrontations one finds in other dystopian novels dealing with themes relating to cultural totalitarianism and social control. One thinks of Alex being forced to undergo the infamous Ludovico Technique in A Clockwork Orange (Burgess), or the moment Winston finally realises that he has been deceived by O'Brien in Nineteen-Eighty-Four (Orwell). The author's prose is captivating throughout and if you are unfamiliar with the crucially important themes that are being discussed, this book could well make you sit up and reconsider precisely what effects the West's ongoing governmental machinations have in store for us all. Mister is a whistle-stop tour through the belly of a beast that has reached full maturity and where the ultimate prize is individual sovereignty and a grateful return to home and hearth.