- Title: The Bleeds
- Author: Dimitri Nasrallah
- Publisher: Esplanade
- Pages: 202 pages
- Price: $19.95
Dimitri Nasrallah’s latest since his acclaimed 2011 novel Niko adds to the literature of the Arab Spring. In The Bleeds, Beirut-born Montreal writer Nasrallah rejects writing about a real-world regime, instead inventing a small country (formerly a British colony) between the Caucasus and the Middle East. In doing so, he has created an allegory about power within a dictatorship – and the foreign powers that allow it. In the 50 years since Blanco Bleed negotiated sovereignty, the Bleeds have never lost an election. Blanco’s son, Mustafa, has made sure of it. But Mustafa is aging and since handing down the presidency to his son – who is more interested in partying – he’s lost control. There’s a concurrent power play: the British, American, Russian and Chinese interests vying for control of the country’s rich uranium deposits. Artfully told with clips from “The Nation” (the state mouthpiece) and “Transfusion Blog” (the online voice of dissent), this is a sardonic look at global affairs, where the people most easily forgotten are the ones dying in the public square.