The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad is a comic science fiction novel and social satire written by Edmonton, Alberta, Canada writer and activist Malcolm Azania under the pen name of "Minister Faust". His first book, it received major international release in August 2004 by the publisher Random House.

Unconventionally, the novel is told from eleven points of view employing distinct first-person narrative voices. Set in Edmonton in 1995, it follows two main characters: Hamza, Sudanese-Canadian former honours English student working as a dishwasher, and Yehat, a Trinidadian-Canadian, a video store clerk and inventor. Hamza is also a Muslim, although his faith is somewhat in crisis. Stuck in a rut, their lives are going nowhere until a mysterious woman shows up, seduces Hamza and draws the two into a quest for a magic artifact.

"Minister Faust brings [The Coyote Kings] alive in a jumpy, hold-nothing-back style," wrote Gerald Jonas in the New York Times Book Review. "Faust anatomizes [the Edmonton setting] with the same loving care Joyce brought to early-20th-century Dublin.... Faust's debut novel is a fresh and stylish entertainment."

"With an attention to detail and an eye for the absurd," wrote reviewer Rick Klaw in the Austin Chronicle, "it is as if Faust channeled Mark Twain to write a Neal Stephenson novel."

Reviews

• New York Times Review
• Hollywood Reporter Review
• CanWest Global Review
• Infinity Plus
• Asimov's Science Fiction Review
• Barnes and Noble Review
• Publishers Weekly Review
• Booklist Review
• SFF World Review
• SciFi Dimensions Review
• SFSite.com Review
• Austin Chronicle review
• January Magazine review
• sfreviews.net review