Free City

An inventor living at the beginning of the Enlightenment keeps journals reflecting on everything from his inventive lovemaking to his discovery of the first binary code, caffeine stimulation, the insanity defense, and the memory of birds. First published in 1996 to international acclaim, Eric Darton’s Free City is the fictional journal of L., a seventeenth-century inventor caught in a precarious love triangle, even as his beloved northern European port town teeters on the brink of catastrophe. In a tale laced with bawdy humor and elements of the fantastical, L. must balance the demands of his patron—a rapacious entrepreneur—against those of his sorceress lover. As L. attempts to avert calamity, he finds himself joined by the most unlikely of allies. Weaving together historical, political and absurdist elements, Free City resonates more profoundly today than ever.