Catabasis follows the protagonist Brathki and his continued submergence in a culture of exile. Encountering both myth and current events, metaphysics and the concrete, Brathki's unending descent mirrors the true nature of what it means to maintain an identity mandated by vested interests.
As incendiary as it is prophetic, Catabasis is a novel that demolishes the very basis of what encompasses culture, foregoing language and a definitive viewpoint in favor of a singular path which has neither origin nor end-a path as undefinable as it is incessant. Not every reader will appreciate Catabasis, but few will fail to be moved by it.
In Catabasis, as in his earlier works, Armen Melikian inverts the parochial notions of language that govern and control the evolution of identity and human expression. The author opens new floodgates into the English language, destabilizing it to its core, yet enriching it in unprecedented ways.
Catabasis is an energetic tour-de-force that mercilessly skewers religion, national identity, economics, gender, social mores, and, above all, the very structure of language itself.
