Mountain R

In an unnamed country, the President of the Republican Council, wanting to "do something big," strikes upon the idea of building a 1,500-meter high mountain as an inspirational monument to national greatness. Construction of the mountain will reduce unemployment, attract hordes of tourists, and the idea can even be exported for sale to other countries. Mountain R relates the rise and fall of this insane project through the eyes of those involved over several decades: the President whose double-talk sets the plan in motion, a worker who, years later, tells his daughter about the disastrous consequences of the never-completed mountain, and an author commissioned to write a novel about the project. An incisive satire about the dangers of half-witted government officials who use political rhetoric to manipulate the patriotism of their constituents, Mountain R is a humorous yet disturbing allegory quite appropriate to our times.

Jacques Jouet was elected to the Oulipo in 1983. He is the author of more than sixty texts in a variety of genres-novels, poetry, plays, literary criticism, and short fiction-including the novels Mountain R (part of his La Re?publique roman cycle), Savage, and Upstaged, all published by Dalkey Archive. Brian Evenson is the chair of the MFA program at Brown. He is the author of The Open Curtain, Altman's Tongue, and Fugue State, among others. His work has won the American Library Best Horror Novel award, and has been nominated for an International Horror Award. He is known for intelligent, sharp prose that takes what we know of the world and turns it upside down.