UnAmerica

MOMUS is the pseudonym of musician, artist and writer Nick Currie, born in 1960 in Paisley, Scotland. He has released thirty albums of pop music on independent labels including 4AD, Creation and Cherry Red. He's written journalism for Wired, The New York Times, and a variety of art publications including Frieze, Art in America and Spike. His other novels include The Book of Jokes (2009, Dalkey Archive Press), The Book of Scotlands (2009, Sternberg) and The Book of Japans (2011, Sternberg).

God doesn't love America. Quite the reverse. The nation is in the iron claw of capitalism, Christianity's basic principles are flouted daily, the South has won the Civil War, slavery is widespread, exploitation rampant, and God-now working as a janitor at Tastee Freez with late-onset Alzheimer's-is rapidly losing the plot. In an effort to obliterate his botched creation from memory, the fallen divinity recruits retail worker Brad Power to enlist a crew of twelve for a seafaring adventure. The mission? To uninvent America. It's never too late, apparently, for an act of creative destruction. A delirious cousin to Kathy Acker's Pussy, King of the Pirates and reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's Valis and Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis, Momus' new novel UnAmerica remodels a classic, charmingly naive sixth century Christian tale-The Voyage of Saint Brendan-for the twenty-first century. Reworking the Irish monastic Wonder Voyage formula, Momus adds anachronistic brio and slapstick humor to the genre's wooden-faced didacticism.