AshehougAgency

The Swastika Star

This is a fearless and controversial novel. Its bite on apocalyptic imagery is sensational: Published in 2004, this novel predicted the Katrina disaster of 2005 in New Orleans! The protagonist, Benjamin Black, a vagabond, a drop-out-student, adopted from Uganda to England, a diaspora, dares the world to meet his visions of mother nature vs. humanity, of a vengeful mother nature committing germ warfare and earthquakes and havoc of all kinds against humanity. A humanity that is killing her, with an unsustainable world development. His opposition to consumerist civilization is the drive behind his poetic narrative, a narrative that also celebrates internationalism, hedonism and a rebel's choice to encounter all experience without moral prohibition.

Reading THE SWASTIKA STAR is like catching stars: after its burning imagery cools, a residue of the heat leaves a singe-mark on the page. On his journey through London's underworld of squatters and prostitutes - to playing Russian roulette with stock-brokers and being hunted by hit-men, he always follows his star: the swastika, the symbol he reclaims as mother nature's symbol, cleansed of nazi ideology.

First published: 2004, Aschehoug Fiction

Bertrand Besigye: Biography and bibliography