by Greg Scorzo –
Love before Covid – A raw, philosophical dive into love’s messy reality—unflinching, dark, and unapologetically human.Unlike typical romance novels, LOVE BEFORE COVID is a dialogue-driven exploration of human flaws and ideologies, blending fiction with metaphysical inquiry. It’s not about comfort; it’s about confrontation and insight.
LOVE BEFORE COVID – BUY Troubador Press, AMAZON UK, AMAZON USA, KINDLE UK, KINDLE US
ALSO AVAILABLE ON all other ebook platforms.
Best described as Traumatic (sur)realism, this book comprises a set of dialogues in the form of real-time conversations, and it is written by a philosopher. This is important because in a sense this is a contemporary re-visiting of the dialogue form of philosophical fiction.
Dialogues entail an exploration of clashing perspectives and opinions, that cause reflection.
Love Before Covid is the story of writer and English teacher Joe Pastorious. Joe is a jazz fan, a Leicester based poet, and a victim of horrendous sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of his mother. The book takes you on a trip through Joe’s mind; a journey through real-time dialogues that emerge from his corrupted memories and dystopian dreams. The contents of Joe’s unconscious tell us more about Joe than he could ever know, and perhaps more about our world than you could ever imagine.
In Love Before Covid, you will meet an altruist who can’t stand up for himself, a gregarious bartender who will do anything to get pregnant, a traumatised art historian who hates children, a successful Mexican writer who dislikes her own friends, a charming public intellectual who once violently disfigured her boyfriend, a tall beautiful dancer who hates fat people and a teenage genius who fantasises about his porn star mother.
You will also encounter passionate feminists, violent alcoholics, religious fanatics, sadistic parents, kind misanthropes, woke bisexuals, a woman who is pressured into cutting off her penis, female kick boxers, violent vegans and a successful therapist who has a habit of ruining people’s lives. The dialogues all co-exist within parallel realities, dreams within dreams, and very passionate and sometimes violent arguments.
You are left to your own devices to decide if you think there are any heroes or villains in this book. Whatever you decide, your moral boundaries will be pushed to the limit. And yes, before you ask, some of the characters in this book eventually catch Covid 19.
However there is always hope. For Joe Pastorious, that comes in the form of a psychopath named Janet Waverley.
Please email admin@gregscorzo.com with your contact details if you would like to get a complimentary review copy.
” Divided into five parts, and mainly consisting of dialogues between character pairs, the book is a hefty tome which reads surprisingly quickly. The dialogues, somewhat script-like, make it completely accessible to anyone. It’s a work of fiction but some aspects of the dialogues scream with bitter realism …This is a book which intrigues, revolts, repulses, stimulates, in parts a stream of consciousness, in others, a metaphysical treatise on contemporary discourse in our media, universities and homes. To read this book is to experience being a silent ghost, haunting bedrooms, living rooms and coffee shops, watching and listening to the most intimate details of conversations spoken by others …This is a challenging book, one not easy to forget. Dazzling in its originality and depth, it’s like nothing you have ever read before or will read again. Unless it is written by Greg Scorzo.”
– KAREN HARRADINE – Author/ Political commentator
Greg Scorzo should come with a warning. This diabolical thinker has produced something dangerous, unsettling and unpleasant. Renewing a literary approach to philosophy befitting the likes of Plato, Rousseau, Sartre, Murdoch or Badiou, Scorzo rattles our prejudices and shatters our assumptions. In this respect, Scorzo is a ‘true’ philosopher.”
BRADLEY TUCK Founder, Editor, facilitator Exploding Appendix www.explodingappendix.com
“Greg is one of the most interesting, original and unorthodox thinkers today.”
DR NIKOS SOTIRAKOPOULOS Sociologist and Author
“I strongly recommend that Love Before Covid be read in tandem with other people, in much the same way as any perplexing and bewildering film should be watched with others and consequently discussed. This is important because the fiction elements of this book are very much influenced by cinema, particularly the films of directors like Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lars Von Trier and David Lynch.”
LIZZIE SODEN Editor of LOVE BEFORE COVID, Independent Artist Filmmaker and Creative Director
Author pages
Troubador Press
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