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Belt and Roadkill: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LQBJ5N3
\\npaperback https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09LGNP95Z
\\nBelt and Roadkill Is Tale of UN Corruption By China With Dark Comedy, Series Launched
\\nLiterary Reflection, Book
\\nNEW YORK CITY, Nov 12 \\u2013 What is a novel? How long should it be? How corrupt is the United Nations? What is the line between real world injustice and fiction, black comedy?
\\nA just published novella, "Belt and Roadkill," raises these questions.
\\nThe corruption of the UN, its documented domination by China as evidenced by two recent real-world bribery prosecutions in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, are the soil or message of the text. But the meta questions about what is a novel(la) is raised by its form and length. (It is available, first on Kindle, here).
\\nEarlier this month Parul Sehgal in The New Yorker bemoaned the democratization of literature, or content, by Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing. But who are the gatekeepers? Who should they be?
\\nThe author of Belt and Roadkill, years ago, was on the threshold of elite / elitist publishing, summoned to a venerable firm on Union Square in Manhattan and told that if only the actual names of Citigroup\'s predatory lenders could be dropped, it might be possible to move forward.
\\nBut aren\'t public figures open to satire, without danger of libel lawsuits?
\\nAren\'t those Predatory Benders who foreclose on thousands of homes just targets, like those at the UN who cover up hundreds of rapes by peacekeepers, and ten thousand Haitians killed by cholera, as only two examples?
\\nBelt and Roadkill does not mention Haiti, even once. It does, however, name-check Cameroon and Western Sahara, Huawei and the January 6, 2021 insurrection, breach or protest, whatever your politics.
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