At the bitter end of the 1960s upon his return home from combat in the Vietnam War
twenty-two-year old Eugene Allen writes a novel called HYSTOPIA. It is set in a strangely
destabilized historical moment where President Kennedy is entering his third term in office
and a new federal agency maintains the mental health of returning soldiers by wiping their
memories through drugs and therapy while those beyond help roam at will re-enacting the
atrocities they have witnessed. Outlandish and tender funny and violent timely and historical
Hystopia is a wild gonzo experience about the nature of trauma homecoming and the redemptive
power of storytelling.
