Dark Diversions: A Traveller's Tale

In Dark Diversions acclaimed author John Ralston Saul stages a black comedy of international proportions that takes the reader from New York to Paris to Morocco to Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s. When he’s not encountering dictators in Third World hotspots Saul's narrator moves in privileged circles on both sides of the Atlantic insinuating himself into the lives of well to do aristocrats. Through his exploits we experience a fascinating world of secret lovers exiled princesses death by veganism and religious heresies. The emotional fireworks of these inhabitants of the First World are sharply juxtaposed with the political infighting of the dictators and the corruption double dealing and fawning that attend them. But as the narrator becomes further enmeshed in these worlds his outsider status grows more ambiguous. Is he a documentarian of privileged foibles and fundamental inequity or an embodiment of the very 'dark diversions' he chronicles? About the Author John Ralston Saul is Canada's leading public intellectual. Declared a 'prophet' by Time magazine Saul has received many awards and prizes including Chile's Pablo Neruda Medal. He is president of PEN International and his thirteen works have been translated into twenty two languages in thirty countries. Dark Diversions is his sixth novel and his first in fifteen years.