What We See in the Smoke

[Ghan] is a master storyteller who is undaunted by boundaries... This book shows us both the forest and the trees in one stunning expression of power. - Bruce Meyer, Author of The First Taste: New and Selected Poems Ghan's book is as refreshingly tender as it is unflinching. - Sharon English: Author of Zero Gravity and Uncomfortably Numb The world we know is coming to an end. How will we connect in the strange and frightening one that's coming to take its place? What We See in the Smoke twists the genres of realism and science fiction to tell the future history of Toronto, a story that stretches from this millennium to the next. The novel leaps across the boundaries of time and space, as present and future Torontonians search for meaning, connection, and love in a city that grows more beautiful and frightening as its familiar characteristics fade away. A musician is caught in an endless time loop unable to reach those he loves, two broke and desperate men plan a heist of a cannibal auction, a detective with sinister proclivities hunts for a criminal who is stealing dreams, and a college student searches for his brother in the hours before a nuclear war. All of these and more lead to a world where only rich cyborgs or the homeless remain, where teleportation has made crime impossible, and where city-sized spaceships are maintained by strange creatures while planet Earth itself is left behind. Ben Berman Ghan spins a web of these lives and many more, blending the familiar with the surreal until both give way to the story of ordinary people in extraordinary times.