{"product_id":"9780226001203","title":"Troy, Unincorporated","description":"Daily it storms: dams give out, a lake in the next county empties, every river swells. And the story says this is love, this is hope, Silly. It's sorry, but it means to keep the afternoon as I left it: folding chairs at a folding table and the light wasp-colored, an old postcard of this was a factory town. And him (who won't be you, not again, nor still) setting the kettle on the ancient stove. On the table, a receipt he'd written on - something about God handing the world back to Job. A meditation on the nature of betrayal, the constraints of identity, and the power of narrative, the lyric monologues in \"Troy\", \"Unincorporated\" offer a retelling of Chaucer's tragedy \"Troilus and Criseyde\". The tale's unrooted characters now find themselves adrift in the industrialized farmlands, strip malls, and half-tenanted \"historic\" downtowns of south-central Wisconsin, including the real, and literally unincorporated, town of Troy. Allusive and often humorous, they retain an affinity with Chaucer, especially in terms of their roles: Troilus, the courtly lover, suffers from depression. Pandarus, the hardworking catalyst who brings the lovers together in Chaucer's poem, is here a car mechanic.Aware of themselves as literary constructs, the narrator and characters in \"Troy\", \"Unincorporated\" are paradoxically driven by the desire to be autonomous creatures - tale tellers rather than tales told. Thus, through \"Troy\", \"Unincorporated\" follows Chaucer's plot, it moves beyond Chaucer to posit a possible fate for Criseyde on this \"litel spot of erthe.\"","brand":"Francesca Abbate","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45746065310014,"sku":"9780226001203","price":851.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9780226001203_8cc86f16-d8f6-4fab-b179-d463f2093396.jpg?v=1707234171","url":"https:\/\/exclusivebooks.co.za\/products\/9780226001203","provider":"Exclusive Books Online","version":"1.0","type":"link"}