Ørop

"The tragedies that had Copenhagen as their stage in early 2015, and above all the investigations, inquiries, and upheavals that ensued, brought to light a hitherto unpublished fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, one that is unfortunately incomplete, either because its end was never written or because it remains to be found..."

 

Thus begins Ørop, the first work of fiction by Renaud Camus ever to be published in English translation. With this little fairy tale (or nightmare), Camus plunges us into the last days of the Øropeans of Ørop, a benighted empire at the end of history that has resolved to once and for all discard the world it inherited. History, however, has other plans...

 

Part jeremiad, part Swiftian satire, Ørop offers an oblique history of that other empire, this one more familiar, "at the far end of a continent, on a jagged peninsula with its own peninsulas, islands, bays, straits." A parable for our times from the author of The Great Replacement.