This seems like a very interesting book.
The time is a very near future, whose features are only slightly stepped up from today’s. The war is still on, and even more misdirected; domestic anti-terror measures have increased to the point where roadblocks and searches are universal and national identification cards are mandated. (In a nicely absurdist sequence, armed agents so thoroughly ransack a Canadian of Middle Eastern descent on his way into a Mariners game that they deposit a whiff of ammunition on his clothing. When he leaves the stadium in the middle of a disappointing afternoon, he is searched again and the residue prompts the evacuation of 30,000 spectators. One dies of a heart attack.)
One character is “August Vanags, the Latvian-born author of a bestselling Holocaust memoir, is a vociferous libertarian whose charm and wit suggest a concealed degeneracy,” and the other personalities in the book range all over the spectrum.
