Synopsis
On the heels of Patient Zero and Pride and Prejudice with Zombies— the electrifying sequel to Hater where humanity fights itself to the death against a backdrop of ultimate apocalyptic destruction
The Earth has been torn into two parts by an irreversible division. Whether due to nature, or the unknown depths of the mind itself, everyone is now either Human or Hater. Victim or killer. Governments have fallen, command structures have collapsed, and relationships have crumbled. Major cities have become refugee camps where human survivors cower together in fear. Amidst this indiscriminate carnage, Danny McCoyne is on a mission to find his daughter Ellis, convinced that her shared Hater condition means her allegiance is to people like him. Free of inhibitions, unrestricted by memories of peace, and driven by instinct, children are pure Haters, and may well define the future of the Hater race. But, as McCoyne makes his way into the heart of human territory, an incident on the battlefield sets in place an unexpected chain of events, forcing him to question everything he believes he knows about the new order that has arisen, and the dynamic of the Hate itself.
Publishers Weekly
Set in a madly grasping modern Budapest, literary critic Ervin’s debut mines very different ways of achieving personal and artistic freedom in three neatly polished, interlocking tales. In “14 Bagatelles,” world-renowned Hungarian composer Harkályi Lajos, a WWII concentration camp survivor who emigrated to America at 15, returns to Budapest for the premiere of his opera, The Golden Lotus, and finds the city shockingly hostile, criminal, and deeply anti-Semitic. “Brooking the Devil” follows the plight of a young black American GI, “Brutus” Gibson, rescued from skinheads by Harkályi, who is framed by his superior officer. Set up on a dangerous gun-running mission, Gibson recognizes his two choices: submit or refuse and risk court-martial. Finally, in “The Empty Chairs,” a second violinist in the Budapest orchestra, a young American expatriate performing Harkályi’s opera on the night of the premiere, deviates wildly from the score in a surprising and transformative reaction to the work--to the conductor’s horror and the composer’s great delight. With dexterous sensibility and fluid prose, Ervin’s protagonists find liberation from the onerous strictures of Budapest’s Nazi and Communist past. (Sept.)