About The Book
Damnificados is loosely based on the real-life occupation of a half-completed skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela, the Tower of David. In this fictional version, six hundred “damnificados”—vagabonds and misfits—take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a rag-tag defensive militia. Their always heroic (and often hilarious) struggle for survival and dignity pits them against corrupt police, the brutal military, and the tyrannical “owners.”
My Thoughts
PM Press is a collectively run anarchist publishing house, so you know when they publish a science fiction dystopia novel about societal collapse, it’s not likely to be a “loner in a bunker surviving against all odds” kind of thing. And for sure, it is not. It is the story of a group, a collective, a gang - of damnificados - homeless desperates living on the streets, in squatted buildings, wherever they can.
A story of hope and community action in the midst of the (literal) garbage of capitalist globalization and extraction economies, this magical realist novel is both learned and entertaining.