The Butterfly Artist

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In a bizarre post-apocalyptic Africa, Chadwick Giles, a recent arrival from the north countries, navigates his way through social strictures, a mutant uprising, and a cultic religious revival, learning to create art from love and life. Giles discovers that there is much to gain through loss, though the rewards are nothing like those he expected or desired.

Chadwick Giles is new to Ngome, having travelled from the cultured north countries to a bizarre post-apocalyptic Africa to assume new employment as an artist for an expatriate entomologist. There, at a masked ball, he meets the mysterious and carefree Emile Beckwith. His discoveries in this new land expose the underside of a society embroiled in conflict and intrigue. Try as he might to remain aloof, he soon finds himself in the midst of the war between the colonial authorities and an uprising of human mutants and four-armed apes that may or may not be associated with a mystical fly-cult, a war that threatens to change him and his art forever.

Forrest Aguirre's short fiction has been published in over fifty venues including Asimov's, Postscripts, Exquisite Corpse, and Gargoyle. Forrest's work has received several honorable mentions in various Year's Best anthologies and his fiction has been a finalist for the StorySouth Million Writers Award. He has won the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award for co-editing the Leviathan 3 anthology.