The Infernal, Mark Doten
The Infernal, Mark Doten
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The Infernal
A Novel

Author: Mark Doten

Narrator: Neil Shah

Unabridged: 11 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/31/2015


Synopsis

In the early years of the Iraq War, a severely burned boy appears on a remote rock formation in the Akkad Valley. A shadowy, powerful group within the U.S. government speculates: Who is he? Where did he come from? And, crucially, what does he know?

In pursuit of that information, an interrogator is summoned from his prison cell, and a hideous and forgotten apparatus of torture, which extracts "perfect confessions," is retrieved from the vaults.

Over the course of four days, a cavalcade of voices rises up from the Akkad boy, each one striving to tell his or her own story. Some of these voices are familiar: Osama bin Laden, L. Paul Bremer, Condoleezza Rice, Mark Zuckerberg. Others are less so. But each one has a role in the world shaped by the war on terror. Each wants to tell us: This is the world as it exists in our innermost selves. This is what has been and what might be. This is The Infernal.

About Mark Doten

Mark Doten's writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, The Believer, and New York magazine. He has an MFA from Columbia University and is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia and the MacDowell Colony. Mark is currently a senior editor at Soho Press and lives in Brooklyn.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Vince on April 19, 2015

Mark Doten's masterful prose couldn't save this bizarre post-postmodern mess. A deliberate mess, but a mess. I was excited by the premise(s) of this novel, and it seems to have so much promise. Unfortunately, content was sacrificed for style. Does the fact that the author is a character in his own b......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on April 18, 2015

Feel like this book is the first to capture/distill the best parts of the internet in a literary context (aka novel): glimpses of unexpected beauty amid the white noise; chaos and conspiracy and 'terror'; hilarious memes; identity and post-identity; lots of yearning for nothing you can really put yo......more

Goodreads review by Mike on May 15, 2019

Such a great premise and interesting beginning but by novel’s end it gets tedious and nearly unreadable. I almost wonder if that was some kind of mimicking of the history of the War in Iraq itself as we (reader and public) slowly lose/lost interest in the whole thing (novel and war). Thematic thread......more

Goodreads review by audley on March 23, 2018

Dystopian and illuminating as my fave lines from an Ai or Alice Notley poem or 80s comic book or Akira or Radiohead or 1984 or Dennis Cooper... A visceral cartoon that feels more true than hell itself and as frustratingly empty. Worth it for the Tom Pally chapters alone, and I'm such a sucker for me......more

Goodreads review by Rowan on May 03, 2021

Phenomenally written, deeply experimental, I understand the low ratings because it's hard to read and largely plotless but I loved it.......more