The Coandă Effect

A novella.

The early years of the XXth century. Passport Levant's kind of century. The Atlantic Ocean, bicycles, vermouth, physics, ghosts, secret rendez-vous in Bucharest, elusive pirates and honest bandits, fishermen outposts, hats and icebergs, the Second Balkans War of 1913, the shadow of Franz Kafka, duels and cobwebs, nostalgia, Thomas More's Utopia and a Finnish villain so dastardly that even the author was shocked by his antics! The publisher of this "pleasantry" advises that it should not be read by persons of delicate conscience who may well be scandalized by the author's witticism and his articulate sympathy shown to rogues, underdogs and madmen in general. That sounds interesting but really, what's it all about? It is a Corto Maltese high adventure concerning magic, science, mystery and mayhem, as the enigmatic "sailor without a ship" plumbs the delirious depths of a fiendish plot to convert the souls of the dead into pure energy! Who is Corto Maltese? Perhaps the finest, most complex and most recondite character penned by an European author in the last half of the last century. The Coanda Effect, Rhys Hughes's masterly and fabulously outrageous homage to Hugo Pratt and Corto Maltese, represents an unique literary event, quite unlike anything written before. A once in a life time event Passport Levant is proud and overjoyed to take part in.