Atomik Aztex

by Sesshu Foster

Overview

In the alternate universe of this glitteringly surreal first novel, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is visited by visions of a parallel world run by the Europeans, where consumerism reigns supreme. Aztecs armed with automatic weapons, totemic powers and blood sacrifice conquer and colonize 1940s Europe, as ghosts of the world wars emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles.

Atomik Aztex is a hilarious read. A potent concoction, with influences from graphic novels, along with Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, the paranoia of Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs, and an outrageous cyber-Aztlán mix reminiscent of Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

Sesshu Foster is the author of the critically acclaimed City Terrace Field Manual.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872864405
Publisher:	City Lights Books
Publication date:	07/01/2005
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sesshu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for over 20 years, and at the Universityof Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, and the Universityof California, Santa Cruz. His work is published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. His most recent novel is Eladatl: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines with Arturo Ernesto Romo, published by City Lights. His previous books include the novel Atomik Aztex and the poetry collection World Ball Notebook, both with City Lights, as well as City of the Future and City Terrace Field Manual. A celebrated writer, his literary awards are numerous: Sesshu was awarded the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry for World Ball Notebook; the Believer Book Award for Atomik Aztex; an American Book Award for Invocation LA: Urban Multicultural Poetry; and finalist for the PEN Center West Poetry Prize, as well as the Paterson Poetry Prize, for City Terrace Field Manual. Sesshu is based in Alhambra, CA.

Editorial Reviews

"… a graphic, hilarious and violent chronicle of multiple realities that could emerge … an amazing exercise of radical imagination."—Guillermo Gómez-Peña

"… this is an ambitious, energetic, and fiercely intelligent novel."—Bookforum

"A fine example of alternative fiction with a strong social theme; recommended for most collections."—Library Journal, January 2006

"Atomik Aztex is hip, bloody, occasionally baffling and often piercingly brilliant."—Cherie Parker, Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 15, 2005

"Hilarious, poignant, and at times devastating, Foster has crafted a fine … cocktail of sublime anarchy to toss into the machine."—Rubén Martínez, author of The New Americans: Seven Families Journey to Another Country

"The prose is an electrifying, eclectic phantasmagoria of Groucho's marxism, dadada, surreal and naturalcombined with double-edged intellectual/historical hysteria."—Rick Harsh, author of the Driftless Trilogy

"This is one mad neighborhood carnival roller coaster ride through Aztlán, the underground, the QT … Oddball, hilarious—deep."—Marisela Norte, author of East L.A. Days/Fellini Nights

"A book so heedlessly imaginative it often seems ready to burst its pages like a comic-book POW."—Emily Barton, Bookforum, December 2005

"… puts his finger on a particular nexus of World War II-era racism, factory life and the landscape of Los Angeles"—The Los Angeles Times, January 2006

Atomik Aztex was chosen the Winner of The Believer Magazine Book Award 2005!!—The Believer Magazine, March 2006

From the Publisher

"With Atomic Aztex, Foster slices through history. . . .puts his finger here on a particular nexus of World War II-era racism, factory life and the landscape of Los Angeles and then claims it for his very own."
—Los Angeles Times

Susan Salter Reynolds

"Atomik Aztex is hip, bloody, occasionally baffling and often piercingly brilliant."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

Cherie Parker

". . . a book so heedlessly imaginative that it often seems ready to burst its pages like a comic-book POW. . . . this is an ambitious, energetic, and fiercely intelligent novel."
—Bookforum

Emily Barton

". . . Foster's first novel . . . leaps fearlessly back and forth from 1940s Stalingrad, where an elite cadre of Aztec warriors is helping the Russians fend off invading Nazis, to 'the frenetic hustle of overcrowded Teknotitlan,' capital of the 'Aztek Socialist Imperium,' to the industrial back alleys of "some 3rd-class city called Los Angeles . . ."
—The Village Voice

Ben Ehrenreich

"Atomik Aztex combines Latin American magical realism with science-fiction for a story set in an alternate future. The Aztec empire has triumphed, running the world with ruthless, and psychotropically enhanced, efficiency."
—San Antonio Current

Elaine Wolff

"Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519; two years later, history tells us, the Aztec civilization fell to the Spanish invaders and was wiped out. Atomik Aztex, the hallucinatory first novel by poet Sesshu Foster, proposes a different reality."
—San Francisco Chronicle

Carolyn Juris