Mongrel

Marko Sijan

ISBN 13: 978-1-894469-54-8

$19.95 CDN/US
202 pp

Set in Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, Marko Sijan’s explosive debut novel, Mongrel, mixes tragedy, black comedy and pathos in its five chapters, each narrated by a different youth, each of whom tilts closer toward an abyss of violence. Their inextricably linked stories span twelve manic hours on June 10, 1999, the last year of the 20th century and the day the United States ends its seventy-eight-day bombing of Serbia. The battering of a small, weak nation by the world’s uncontested superpower mirrors a lesson that develops among Sera, Gus, Sophie, Milan and Gunther: that exploitation may be the most basic feature of human intercourse. Mongrel explores the possibility that Canadian multiculturalism is not the rosy miracle so many believe it to be; an impatient, confused and angry monster may be lurking in its underbelly, itching to burst out.

“Raw, funny and ferocious. In Mongrel, Marko Sijan vividly captures the passion, vulnerability and brutality of teens.”
— Elyse Friedman, author of Long Story Short and Then Again

“Sijan opens a door and suddenly you are in Hell. Or high school in Windsor. Mongrel nails every risky, pathetic, onanistic, psychotic, suicidal aspect of teenhood. The via doloroso travelled by these alienated characters spirals only one way—down. And the way down is coated in vomit, tears, self-loathing, sobbing mothers, psycho football stars, blood, ecstasy, semen and shit. Holden Caulfield wouldn’t last for a second in this milieu.”
— Jim Smith, author of Back Off, Assassin! New & Selected Poems