Factory 19We’re told that the future will be brighter. But what if human happiness really lies in the past?
Hobart, 2022: a city with a declining population, in the grip of a dark recession. A rusty ship sails into the harbour and begins to unload its cargo on the site of the once famous but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known to the world as GoFA. One day the city’s residents are awoken by a high-pitched sound no one has heard for two generations: a factory whistle. GoFA’s owner, world-famous billionaire Dundas Faussett, is creating his most ambitious installation yet. He’s going to defeat technology’s dominance over our lives by establishing a new Year Zero: 1948. Those whose jobs have been destroyed by Amazon and Uber and Airbnb are invited to fight back in the only way that can possibly succeed: by living as if the internet had never been invented. The hold of Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and their ilk starts to loosen as the revolutionary example of Factory 19 spreads. Can nostalgia really defeat the future? Can the little people win back the world? We are about to find out. What the critics are sayingJack Cameron Stanton, The Age, Saturday 30 January 2021
Factory 19 is a Swiftean satire for the modern technophobe. We need writers such as Glover who have the eloquence and imagination to interpret the world differently, who write novels that are intellectually robust and capture their political ambitions as fables. Jack Callil, The Guardian, 27 November 2020 Tongue firmly in cheek, Glover draws readers into a pre-internet era of bustling industry, one cast in the lurid hues of Kodachrome and Technicolor. For those who feel increasingly alienated by the digital age, this may be your ticket off the mainland. Frank Bongiorno, Australian Book Review, January 2021 Glover has the gift of creating a vivid world and making you care about its fate as well as that of the characters who inhabit it. There is no better Australian critic of the arrogance, mediocrity, and narcissism of modern political and economic élites, or of the deep store of ideological rubbish with which they ply their trade. Kate Frawley, Books and Publishing, 20 September 2020 Humorous, thought-provoking and entirely imaginable, Factory 19 is a fascinating commentary on where we may be headed. ANZ LitLovers It’s very cleverly done, and the tension in the concluding chapters is all the more compelling for being so unexpected. I suspect this book might make a lively film… Anna Thwaites,The Saturday Paper, 28 November 2020 Factory 19, Dennis Glover's second novel, is a story in which the impulse [for nostalgia] is enacted on a grand scale. |
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Dennis Glover | Chestnut Tree | [email protected]
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