First published 2007
Felix Ventura runs an unusual business from his home. He crafts false histories for customers who want to escape their actual backgrounds. Some clients need complete biographical overhauls with invented ancestors and fabricated childhood memories. Others require smaller adjustments to existing family stories. A gecko living on Felix's wall observes these transactions and narrates the strange world of manufactured nostalgia. The lizard watches as Felix's clients begin to believe their purchased memories with startling conviction. They recall events that never occurred while genuine experiences fade from their minds. The gecko witnesses how identity becomes fluid when memory can be bought and sold. Felix's work raises questions about whether authentic experience matters when false memories feel completely real. The story examines the relationship between personal history and self-knowledge through the eyes of an unlikely narrator who understands that truth and memory rarely align.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, magical-realism
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Africa
Period: 21st-century
180 pages · Paperback · Arcadia Books