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Max Schwartzvoete, the protagonist of this historical satire, began his journey as a former hardware tradesman who migrated from South Africa to Australia during apartheid. He guides us through his years as a lecturer at Prosper Institute of Technology, which is later taken over by Her Royal Lamb Institute of Triumphal Technocrats. He becomes a member of the HRLITT Business Faculty and ventures into the world of business ethics. He gains admission to an ethics conference in New York by writing a paper titled, in part, “A Philosophical Investigation Guided by King Hammurabi’s Teachings of Robert Nozick’s Comprehension of Immanuel Kant’s Second Formulation….” His primary motive for traveling to New York is not to attend the conference, however. Instead, he travels to meet up with his uncle Izaak, who had double-crossed Max’s father in past illegal business deals. Despite his ironic and ostensible interest in ethics, he exacts revenge in a surprising way.
It is difficult to maintain both a sense of deep introspection and a steady supply of good humor, but the author accomplishes both remarkably well. This work reads as both a rollicking satire and a commentary on everything from academics and university life to politics and revenge. His viewpoints are clear through his tongue-in-cheek critique of decisions made by those in power. However, he injects enough lightheartedness and, at times, outlandishness to keep things interesting. One passage will have him describing the association between Japan and Australia during World War II, and in the next, he introduces a new character, Aloisia Buffoonusia, a professor of Antisocial Marketing. In a work that somehow manages to reference Vito Corleone, Taylor Swift, and Plato within the same passage, the author masterfully weaves a tale that will challenge, inform, and keep the reader hooked until the end.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review