What Lot's Wife Saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

What Lot's Wife Saw

Ioanna Bourazopoulou

Brilliant apocalyptic novel set 25 yrs in the future in which purple salt becomes the source of all riches and all evil as the salt is mined and workers exploited. Told backwards in time, mainly using correspondence, this sometimes makes the story difficult to follow. My advice is don’t struggle to understand it too much. Just enjoy for the sheer inventiveness and writing! Great book.

Extract
'Have you not considered, Mr Book, that the price of blood had been necessary for the earth to relinquish its most precious diamond?'
Book, in shame, tried to hide his fingernails, on which a grain or two of violet salt could be discerned. He might dislike the Consortium, but he manically consumed its product, and this was a contradiction with which he had to live, as did all the others. The mental processes that demanded that the spicy substance that sprang from the ancient earth of Sodom was so irresistibly desirable had no logical explanation.
Parallels
  • The Children of Men by P.D. James
  • The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard