Mage of Fools - Paperback

by Eugen Bacon (Author)

A dictator's sorcerer. A world of forbidden knowledge. One woman's fight for freedom.

In the dystopian world of Mafinga, Jasmin must contend with a dictator's sorcerer to cleanse the socialist state of its deadly pollution. Mafinga's malevolent king dislikes literature and, together with his sorcerer Atari, has collapsed the environment to almost uninhabitable. The sun has killed all the able men, including Jasmin's husband Godi.

But Jasmin has Godi's secret story machine that tells of a better world, far different from the wastelands of Mafinga. Jasmin's crime for possessing the machine and its subversive text is punishable by death. Fate grants a cruel reprieve in the service of a childless queen who claims Jasmin's children as her own. Jasmin is powerless--until she discovers secrets behind the king and his sorcerer.

For readers of dystopian fiction, African literature, and stories of resistance against oppression.

Author Biography

Eugen Bacon is African Australian, a computer scientist mentally re-engineered into creative writing. She's the author of Claiming T-Mo (Meerkat Press), Road to Woop Woop & Other Stories (Meerkat Press), Ivory's Story (NewCon Press), and Writing Speculative Fiction (Macmillan). Her work has won, been shortlisted, longlisted, or commended in national and international awards, including the BSFA Awards, Foreword Book of the Year Awards, Bridport Prize, Copyright Agency Prize, Australian Shadows Awards, Ditmar Awards, and Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction by Africans.