Dark Diversions

Intrigue, prestige, debauchery: Dark Diversions by acclaimed author John Ralston Saul is a black comedy of international proportions.

From aristocrats and the privileged circles of New York and Paris to military dictators and the political infighting, double-dealing and corruption or their regimes in Morocco and Haiti, welcome to the world where money and power reside.

Through a series of encounters with its inhabitants, at once beguiling and grotesque, our investigative narrator uncovers bizarrre and disturbing stories of secret lovers, exiled princesses, religious heresies and murder. But as he becomes further enmeshed in this savage realm, his ambiguous status becomes increasingly unsettling: is he the impartial observer of priviliged foibles and fundamental inequity he appears to be? Or is he, perhaps, an embodiment of the dark diversions he chronicles?

Laced with scathing wit, Dark Diversions is a novel that inveigles its reader on a picaresque journey of depravity.

''A delightful novel, invigoratingly wicked'' Le Monde

''Saul has the eye, the aloofness, the killer turn of phrase of a Truman Capote'' Le Figaro

John Ralston Saul is Canada''s leading public intellectual. Declared a ''prophet'' by Time magazine, Saul has received many awards and prizes, including Chile''s Pablo Neruda Medal. He is president of PEN International, and his thirteen works have been translated into twenty-two languages in thirty countries. Dark Diversions is his sixth novel.