Naraka by Alessandro Manzetti
A S/F Horror novel by Bram Stoker Award Winning author Alessandro Manzetti.
Welcome to New Belmarsh Penitentiary, a space farm of human meat, where Slicers dispatch fleeing captives and organs are mechanically excised from the flesh and kept alive. Torture and death in a thousand variations await the dying and the damned. After the impact of radioactive, disease-bringing meteorite Uxor77 (presenting a new Year 0), a slow but unrelenting apocalypse is triggered. Earth is poisoned, agriculture compromised. In an already over-exploited environment, this leads to a global food crisis. Only the rich can afford what little vegetables and meat remain clean. Cannibalism is just around the corner.
In the year 41 post-Uxor, countries like New France are heavily militarized and entire districts out of control, such as South Paris 5, governed by the criminal boss Big Blue, an “artist” who collects sadistic human installations. The wealthy dine at illegal cannibalistic restaurants like Le Sphinx Tatoué, where they can have sadistic sex and unorthodox meals with “disposable” prostitutes, while mutated rats compete with human wretches on the streets for scraps of food.
New Moon Corporation is making a profit out of this mess, experimenting with new drugs and breeding humans to produce meat for the rich. To this end, NARAKA, aka New Belmarsh Penitentiary, is built on the Moon, a way to control the spreading criminality by removing from the planet the worst scum of Earth. This includes Kiki Léger, former South Paris 5 prostitute turned professional assassin. In Naraka, inmates are slaughtered, packaged, and delivered to Earth in cans, while a lunatic pedophile priest makes up a new heretic religion. Even worse things happen in the lower layers of the underground, hive-like structure …
Cover art by Wendy Saber Core, internal illustrations by Stefano Cardoselli.
“I am unable to think of a more original novel in any genre. Each paragraph is a delectable new treat in what you should think of as a diabolical Whitman’s Sampler from Hell. I’ve never taken LSD and now I don’t have to; after finishing NARAKA, its hideous, chimeral imagery raced ceaseless Tartarean circles in my brain, like a spew of appalling living things, and I was helpless to stop it. This book is a must-read for fans of any type of heavy-weight non-mainstream fiction, an unparalleled literary carpet-bombing that will warp your mind for some time to come.”
—Edward Lee, author of THE BIGHEAD and WHITE TRASH GOTHIC
“Alessandro Manzetti’s NARAKA is a dark, frightening and heartbreaking novel that takes an unflinching look at evil and courage. Highly recommended!”
—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of GLIMPSE and V-WARS
