Everything Must Go – Lauren John Joseph

In a future-queer world of magically changing locations, perversely transformed historical figures and oodles of spatter-violence, an intersexual teen mother describes her road trip with a cast of surreal travel buddies. The goal of her final destination: unleashing the Apocalypse.

Riding in a banana-yellow convertible with our hero/ine is the strangely mature Baby, able to chat while still in the womb; as well as two Catholic Missionaries with a violent streak, a Charlie Chaplin who communicates only with cue cards, and Candy Bar, a winsome club kid who ends up fixing the face of Valentino’s corpse at his funeral.

Follow our hero/ine through a dreamlike jungle of orgies and terrorist explosions, described in language as word-rich and surreal as a Ronald Firbank novel. You’ll howl with laughter the whole time and have nightmares about it long after you come to the breathlessly ridiculous final page.