Publication Day
Poor Man’s Opera is a radical reimagining of Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, and written in a faux Shakespearean language mixed with modern colloquialisms, a smattering of French and hip hop, as well as Mayoff’s own invented rhyming slang.
The novel takes place in a remote future where Canada is known as the Northlands and has been annexed by the Free Republic of America, its authoritarian neighbour to the south. Where there used to be provinces and territories, there are now a handful of self-governing city-states spread throughout a wilderness ravaged of its natural resources.
The story is set in the city-state of New Old York (at one time Toronto) and narrated by a gender-fluid Tarot reader who is an unofficial advisor to a high-ranking politician.
Upcoming is a musical side project related to the lyrics that appear in every chapter of the novel, a soundtrack that functions as an innovative promotional tool and a concept album in its own right.
Praise for Poor Man’s Opera
“A fabulous fable of politics, identity and love where no-one and nothing is what you (or they) expect, where the reveal is a revelation, the transformation is sexual and the sex is transformational, where operatic surprise, comedy and drama are the stage for a serious examination of modern power and policy, Poor Man’s Opera is a wit-quickened card trick of a novel.”
Gary Barwin - author of Yiddish for Pirates, winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and The Comedian’s Book of the Dead
“Steven Mayoff’s audacious new novel, Poor Man’s Opera… is at once a dystopian fable, a Tarot reading, an opera libretto in narrative form, a sustained linguistic performance, and, at its sturdiest spine, a rewriting of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in speculative Canadian dress.”
Dr. Amy Tucker - The Third Shore (substack)
