The City Awake

Barlows metaphysical noir The City Awake is a novel of chemically induced amnesia doppelgängers fanatics and killers. Saul a man without a history awakes in a hotel room with a note in his pocket. Hunting for answers he must survive rival assassins a millionaire with an axe to grind a shape-shifting femme fatal a silent hit man and a psychotic who is only looking for an exit. Barlow evokes a vast mid-century modernist cityscape in prose that is by turns hard-boiled then unexpectedly psychedelic and delicate. With temporal and spatial distortions reminiscent of A. E. van Vogts The World of Null-A the novel that inspired Godards Alphaville this is a vivid investigation of identity scientific speculation and Biblical Apocrypha. The City Awake is a mirror maze of dark streets and darker secrets.