The Catastrophe by Ian Wedde. Photo / SuppliedA middle-aged food critic, an expat New Zealander named Christopher Hare, is playing with his food in a restaurant in Nice. His dinner, Provencal braised rabbit and salt pork, is, he notes, rubbish and he is feeling bored and lonely. "No, not lonely. Alone," he quickly amends.
As he gazes out of the window, he notices a "tall, gangling" woman with pale hands - gloves? - get out of a taxi on the other side of the street. She looks up at him, framed in the window. Within seconds she's inside, gun drawn, shooting dead a large man and his young female companion in one of the booths. Then she drops her expensive-looking bag on the floor and calmly walks out, getting back into the cab.
Christopher, as if propelled by an invisible force, picks up the fake Gucci bag, runs after her and jumps in the "cab". He has inexplicably kidnapped himself, forcing himself upon a group of furious Palestinian assassins who must decide what to do with him. Why has he done it? Will he live or die?

Ian Wedde's new novel, The Catastrophe, written during his 2009 Michael King Writer's Centre Residency, begins with this self-inflicted abduction and evolves into the scrutiny of a range of calamities, past and present: the flowering then ending of Christopher's marriage to London photographer and ex-junkie Mary Pepper; the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) triggered by the establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians; the culinary hurdles a critic must cross, including the monstrous Ligurian dish, the Cappon Magro.
The book touches on serious issues: the international trade in body parts, arms dealing, crimes against humanity. Then there is sex, food and a vein of insidious dark humour...
Christopher Hare, says Auckland-based Wedde, who was last week named our third Poet Laureate, is a man who has lost the ability to make decisions.
"This decision that he makes to run after a woman who has just shot two people in front of him - no one in their right mind is going to do that and yet this impulse drives him and he does this totally irrational thing."

Full review and interview at NZ Herald.