Overview
At the turn of the 21st century, Florian, a washed-up one-hit-wonder, finds new creative life in a pseudo-Marxist performance art group. Things soon go awry, however, when members of the group find themselves the object of a stalker in an animal mask. An extreme form of identity politics takes hold and historical injustices, no matter how distant (even the 1240 Mongolian siege of Kiev), must be avenged. Set in a world despoiled by the excesses of consumer capitalism, Naked Defiance is the story of idealists who seek a richer engagement with life, but are repressed by the intrusion of internecine politics.
Reviews / Endorsements
The truest thing I can say about Naked Defiance is also the best compliment I could give to any novel: Naked Defiance is absolutely unlike anything else I have ever read. Patrik Sampler is astonishing in his originality and in his tough critique of common, complacent ways of living. Wickedly smart and disarmingly funny, Sampler is a writer to watch. His book comes as a welcome and necessary challenge to the miserable logic of capitalism.
Angie Abdou (author, This One Wild Life)
Patrik Sampler’s second novel piles together irony, witticisms, and authorial legerdemain in its toweringly tall tale… a tour de force of lies and contradictions. … dazzlingly, uproariously deceitful … It’s a house of cards built on sand where an emperor with no clothes reigns. Postmodern experimentation? Yes. Easy to follow? Hell, no. Intellectually stimulating? Absolutely. … a lunatic riot of gags. Some readers will stop early (perhaps halfway through the foreword); others will savour a delirious novelistic long con. … Rome’s burning; Sampler’s fiddling; and we’re chuckling, amused by a shiny literary bauble.
Brett Josef Grubisic in The Vancouver Sun
… [a] fine novel… an arcane and elaborate fiction. It’s elusive and complicated. Subversive is another word. The storyline is absurd and the characters are ridiculous, but the reading experience is compelling. … a brilliant, inventive literary effort. … a decidedly chilly, emotionally neutered world…
Steven Brown in The BC Review
Patrik Sampler’s second novel, Naked Defiance, confounds categorization. … it’s at once a complex metafiction, a Kafkaesque satire, and a smart critique of neoliberalism. It shouldn’t work, but it does. … Through such complications, Naked Defiance—whatever it is—challenges ideas of authorship, ownership, and truth in a post-truth world.
David Venn in Bookworm (The Literary Review of Canada)
Naked Defiance… skewers the extremist politics of our age… reflects currents in our contemporary culture, and satirizes them in nuanced and funny ways. Anyone coming from the progressive left, and dismayed with the turn it has taken, will find lots to recognize here.
Tara Henley at Lean Out with Tara Henley
… a jumbled mix of narrative tricks …
Gene Homel in BC BookWorld
Soundtrack
Naked Defiance has an unofficial ‘soundtrack.’ Click here.
Publishing Details
Published in Canada and USA on April 15, 2023 by New Star Books.
For other publishing rights, contact Evan Brown at the Transatlantic Agency.
Where to Purchase a Copy
Naked Defiance can be purchased through your local bookseller, at all the regular online locations, and directly from the publisher New Star Books. For those outside of Canada and the USA wishing to order a copy online, but not through “the regular online locations,” note that SPD ships overseas.
Patrik Sampler 