Arctic Smoke

Shortlisted for Best Cover Design at the 2020 Alberta Book Publishing Awards! On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, ageing punk Lor Kowalski is unsure of his sanity. He is haunted by hallucinogens and harbingers, strung out on broken stories that he cannot piece together into a lucid whole. Forced to join his old band from a life he’d rather forget, he is dragged north under the spell of a mysterious ad for an Arctic festival tour. As the band members unspool across the surreal snowscapes and frozen wastelands, rogue CSIS agents are hot on their increasingly iced-over heels. But what are ageing punks to rogue agents? Subversive and irredeemable, spectres from a past that must be erased with extreme prejudice. Randy Nikkel Schroeder’s Arctic Smoke combines coked-up magic realism with a wound-up cyberpunk style.