Tomorrow the Victory

What is victory? What would victory actually be in our present world? What would revolution be – and what would happen after?

In John Fraser’s latest novel, Mack meets an old combatant, a revolutionary, his revolution accomplished: satisfied. He leaves his girlfriend Sophie, but never shakes her off. He tries revealed religion, mysticism, sex. Through his showy friend, Paco, he meets Aurora – a flaky performer, a woman every man would die for her. He tries to define what's on the inside from the outside – specifically, a poor, resource-rich country, between revolt and foreign intervention.

He joins a committee deciding between a project for reform: justice: complicity ... or colluding with a persecuted opposition. Complexity gradually comes to prevail... He takes refuge in isolation, a leisure centre-cum retreat, where political plotting carries on, a kind of Mongol wave may be in preparation. He recoils: neither reform nor revolutionary onslaught – both certainty, predictability, that is, and destruction – are to his taste.

As his latest girl is seduced by his new best friend, he returns to the beginning: for tomorrow is the victory…