Alice in Plunderland

Fiction. Art. With collages by Clelia Scala. From the multi-award-winning poet and scholar Steve McCaffery comes ALICE IN PLUNDERLAND, a reimagining of Lewis Carroll's Alice books that will forever change the way readers negotiate Wonderland and its menagerie of characters. Written as part of a larger project called Chiasmus, in which McCaffery will "queer the classics," Plunderland's Alice and all her cohorts become infused with characteristics related to the notion of "plunder"--theft, drug addiction, looting, and civil disorder. Instilled with humour, intelligence, and more than a little bit of absurdity, this retelling of Alice's adventures takes place somewhere other than expected. In the rough-and- tumble world of Plunderland, where theft, drugs, and gangs hold sway, and nary a tea party is to be found, the Cheshire Cat is a junkie from the UK; the King and Queen reign over the land of Cocaine; even Alice's adventures are transformed in her quest for a fix. "Literature for McCaffery... is not an act of imaginative creation but a procedure, a machine for estranging us from our own language--estranging and thereby recuperating... [Panopticon] is ultimately a profoundly optimistic work, a leap of faith that chooses to revel in the opacity of language... A hypnotizing work."--Full Stop