Vic City Express

It could be happening here…or there. Today the place is Greece, wracked by a crisis that has pushed people to the brink. Two strangers meet in a train headed for Athens. One spews out his disgust at the foreigners and the poverty that have invaded the neighborhood he calls home, Vic City. He even has a "final solution” in mind. The other, seized by fright—or is it resignation and apathy?— squirms as his haughty silence gives way to voyeurism and to political correctness. While the former, uninhibited, lashes out at the economic crisis in a violent racist rant, the latter, troubled, checks his email about the latest health treatments aimed at him and his family. Along the way, we get glimpses of the forces that have destroyed a society. Who will end up leading its angry, desperate and rudderless people? Vic City Express seizes the anxieties of our dystopian globalized world.

Yannis Tsirbas is a novelist and playwright born in Athens, Greece, in 1976. He was co-screenwriter of the award-winning movie Amerika Square, which was based on Vic City Express. International journalist and award-winning literary translator Fred A. Reed is also a respected specialist on politics and religion in the Middle East. After several years as a librarian and trade union activist at the Montreal Gazette, Reed began reporting from Islamic Iran in 1984. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Award for translation.