A massive, epic alternative history of the twentieth century, but told in brief elliptical, ambiguous fragments, eschewing plot and linear storytelling. Una Persson and a large cast of real and imagined figures, including Jerry Conrnelius, Colonel Pyat, Joseph Conrad and Trotsky all rub shoulders and exchange cryptic remarks and ponder philosophy and politics and the nature of time or perform plays and songs dressed as a harlequinade. There is very little for the reader to grab hold of here in terms of traditional narrative, but the very treatise of this sharp, sad little book is that it is the mystery and the ambiguity and the uncertainty that makes life worth living.

This is a secret history, but it is a secret history that reveals the conspiracies and machinations and vast, intricately plotted schemes are projections of those with linear imaginations on the people who move through history. As the century flattens and simplifies and becomes colder, the wonder and mad idealism and passion wane, become coarser and more mechanical. From the glorious anarchists revolutions in Ontario, to a final dance in a fog bound cruiser as the ice closes in, The Entropy Tango traces the falling arc of the time operatives through this world as as Empires crumble and war becomes business.

But I could be wrong about that. ( )