A man chases after a mysterious metal object that may not even exist --
and his journey leads him on to ever-greater levels of madness,
dissociation, and metaphysical conundrums.
After ten years in a Zen monastery, Proteus knows it's time to leave. A
troubled, solitary man, he knows what he seeks is not to be found
sitting in meditation. His problem is that, during his time at the
monastery, he's discovered something strange inside his mind: the
ability to connect with a mysterious, silent, metallic spherical object
he calls Mosquito. His connection to this possibly extraterrestrial
object, which seems to dwell on an existential plane of its own, gives
Proteus a flimsy sense of purpose. So when Mosquito abruptly disappears
one day, Proteus can't bear the loss, and he sets off in pursuit of
answers.
Thus starts a surreal, philosophically maddening quest for meaning.
Chasing the elusive Mosquito leads Proteus to in-between worlds where
things do not quite hold together, and where the living and the dead
must learn to live in and out of the boundaries of time. The further he
gets from sanity, the closer he comes to something that may turn out to
be wisdom.
Playful but unapologetically challenging, New People of the Flat Earth
is a breathtakingly original novel that defies categorisation or
summary.
