City of Rats

Welcome to the gutters of 1970s Paris - and the anarchic, darkly comic world of City of Rats . When pet rat Gouri finds himself locked out of his owner‘s apartment, he has no choice but to strike out alone onto the pavements of Paris. But what begins as a strange and marvellous bedtime story - Gouri and his new friend Raka selling flour-coated worms to pigeons for spare change - soon spirals into an exhilarating whirlwind of murder, sex, unionised hamsters, courtroom drama, and, finally, Armageddon. Told through a series of letters from Gouri to Argentinian playwright Copi, City of Rats channels Copi‘s lifelong fascination with society‘s outcasts - queer people, immigrants, the homeless, and criminals - into a fiercely imaginative, unflinchingly provocative tale of a world hurtling into madness. ‘Copi is the sassiest, most decadent, poised, unpredictable, violent, galling, and marvellous of any author in the past quarter century‘ Charlie Hebdo TRANSLATED BY KIT SCHLUTER; WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CESAR AIRA