Adam's Franchise

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In the land of Daoistan, freedom has arrived at last. The revolution liberated all, then enslaved everyone, and now it was liberating them again by allowing people to own credit cards. And a man with credit is a man who has the world at his fingertips, or at least a trip into town where the temptations are pretty much as they have always been, only more people can afford them.

ADAM’S FRANCHISE is a story about Adam and his Franchise. He is not quite sure what that means, but he is a modern man, embracing the economic miracle and taking up a gift shop franchise at a new hotel. There he will sell much the same things that he always sold: baskets, pots, cultural artefacts of various kinds, except at a modern price to foreigners, should they ever care to come to the hotel. The desert that he lives in is not the most beautiful of places, policed by Omar who has to learn how to get out of his hammock, fuelled by Castrol who just loves the smell of petrol and the visions it gives him, and terrorised by nomads and Adam’s volatile brothers-in-law. But if it ever rids itself of the last vestiges of barbarism, both pre-revolutionary and revolutionary, as epitomised by Adam’s indolent, lustful, embittered, rapacious, cynical, superstitious father, Saleem, then harmony – both spiritual and economic –might assert itself. Or maybe, just air-conditioning.

Daoistan exists everywhere, or has done at some time or other. And there have been many Adams.

ADVANCE COMMENTS

Adam’s Franchise is a cinematic, picaresque, family drama that reads like a comic tragedy.  Adam’s desire for modernity is contrasted against the traditional cultures of his widowed father and his wife’s taciturn family.  The events set in Daoistan that comprise the plot of this novel are amusing, slightly manic, and feel like escapades going awry.  Adam’s persistence in his desperate bid to be modern – he sets up a shop in a hotel, acquires a western suit, travels to the city to open a bank account – gives the story an intriguing energy.  He proves a sympathetic character despite his many flaws, and he somehow succeeds in spite of himself, this protagonist who is fated to be thwarted at every turn.  An enjoyable read, with a memorably mad cast of characters inhabiting a world that is slightly surreal, yet still dauntingly real.

– Xu Xi novelist, author of That Man In Our Lives

A breathless, Technicolor romp through something very like the modern, globalised world.

– Justin Hill, Author of the Washington Post Book of the Year, The Drink and Dream Teahouse