Referred to as ''cobra poison'' and ''the work of the Antichrist'' by international religious figures, and as ''anti-literature'' by the author himself, Journey to Virginland: Catena is a wildly irreverent, incendiary and energetic tour-de-force that mercilessly skewers religion, national identity, economics, gender, social mores, history and even language itself. In equal parts satire, philosophy, polemic and prophecy, Journey to Virginland: Catena explores the odyssey of Dog, the canine protagonist, and his encounters with both the origins and the manifestations of dysfunctional and destructive social strata in a unique voice, a voice at once both acerbic and erudite. Dispossessed and polarized, Dog's pithy observations have been called both ''heartbreaking and diabolical'' as well as ''brutally raw, and painfully honest,'' earning the author international praise as well as death threats, interrogations, and suppression even before the work's release. Journey to Virginland: Catena is a combustible and explosive condemnation of the very canon of Western civilization. Rejecting ''the protocols of the conventional novel,'' its form and its structure in favor of experimentation and epistolary fervor, Melikian has crafted one of the most unique, ambitious and unforgettable voices in the history of modern literature, a voice that has much deeper ramifications for civilization as a whole. A voice that is as inspiring as it is infuriating, as damning as it is uproariously funny, as fragmented as it is astute, as vitriolic as it is tender, and one that reminds us of the very limits of our own innate humanity.
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