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2000s: A breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.
2000s: A breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts.
Vincent is the beautiful bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. New York financier Jonathan Alkaitis owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, a hooded figure scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: ‘Why don’t you swallow broken glass.’ Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune-Avramidis, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of a Neptune-Avramidis ship.
The main setting:
Vancouver Island
“But they were citizens of a shadow country that in his previous life he’d only dimly perceived, a country located at the edge of an abyss.”
The Glass Hotel is on Vancouver Island, only accessible by boat. It’s a luxury 5 star hotel but it’s remote and there’s something very very wrong here. Set on the north coast, close to Port Hardy, the hotel is of course fictional but it stands for so much that is real: the Country of Money, ponzi schemes, ghosts and all the regrets in life.
At the same time, there is a container ship off the coast of Mauritius. This ship is called Neptune – Avramidis and it’s part of this ghostly mystery.
The city of Toronto is a minor location but is where the story begins.
New York
The towers of Manhattan also feature but New York is not the main setting of the affair – well the financial affair it is….This is the city of money after all.
Destination/location: Vancouver Island, Toronto, New York Author/guide: Emily St John Mandel Departure Time: various
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