Why a Booktrail?
2000s: A failed musician t enters a shadowy world
In the City of Pigs
What you need to know before your trail
Alexander Otkazov is finished with Montreal. Having wasted his youth on the love of art, he’s ready for a life of anonymous condo towers and profitable boredom. But when he moves to Toronto, he is forced into a monkish existence by the unforgiving pressures of the city — until he stumbles across a story about an ambitious experimental music collective that could be his ticket to a better job and a better life.
Desperate to prove himself as a journalist, Alexander chases answers that take him from Forest Hill mansions to the bottom of Halifax Harbour, moving ever deeper into a shadowy world of amorphous real estate deals, creative megalomania, and finance capitalism, where avant-garde art is simply another mask for big money. In order to unravel the threads tying everything he loves to everything he hates, he will have to confront his own most sordid desires and the lengths he is willing to go to achieve his dreams of an easy life.
Locations
Reset- Canada - Quebec - Montreal
- A: Montreal train station
- B: Lake of Two Mountains
- Canada - Ontario - Toronto
- C: Toronto Central Station
- D: Queen St West - Warehouse
- E: Roncesvalles
- F: Liberty village
Travel Guide
From Montreal to Toronto
“It isn’t possible to really know a city without working in it. Not because work forces you to interact with unpleasant people you would otherwise avoid (which can easily be managed by hanging around an art gallery or going to the beach), but because a city is essentially a massive production line, and only by entering its infernal machinery can you see how it operates.”
The transformation of the city
“From below, it was more ephemeral, a dream of concrete and glass and steel hanging above the solid earth.”
BookTrail Boarding Pass: In the City of Pigs
Destination/location: Montreal, Toronto Author/guide: André Forget Departure Time: 2000s
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