Kill the Mall

By: Pasha Malla

Narrated by: Anand Rajaram

"Pasha Malla writes like a reincarnated Kafka." (Ian Williams, winner of the Giller Prize for Reproduction)

Douglas Adams meets David Lynch in this ingenious, witty fable about one of North America's most surreal inventions - the local mall.

After writing a letter in praise of malls, our eccentric narrator is offered a residency at a shabby suburban shopping centre. His mission: to occupy the mall for several weeks, splitting his time between "making work" and "engaging the public," all while chronicling his adventures in weekly progress reports.

Before long, a series of strange after-hour events rattles our hero, and he sets forth on a nightly quest to untangle the mysterious forces at play in the mall's unmapped recesses. Things quickly get hairy, and our narrator's optimism about his mall residency descends into doubt, and then into a full-blown phantasmagoria of horror and (possibly) murder. With the aid of a weird and wonderful cast of mall-dwelling misfits - including a pony named Gary - our narrator is forced to conclude that his new residence may not be the temple of consumer bliss he initially imagined, but something far more sinister. And who, or what, is benefitting from its existence?

Much like the shopping centers it praises and parodies, Pasha Malla’s wildly adventurous novel follows its own internal logic, channeling its narrator’s unshakeable innocence to explore the darker edges of human (and other) nature.

©2020 Pasha Malla (P)2020 Knopf Canada

Critic reviews

“[Pasha Malla’s books]...take chances with form, are unsettlingly funny, and tackle a range of themes in unorthodox ways.... [I]n this book as in his others, his writing is set apart by the courage of its conviction - his scenarios and stories, however bizarre, are internally consistent and self-sustaining. He draws us in with humour and intriguing incidents.... [T]his isn’t a book you’ll easily forget.” (Toronto Star)

“[A] jovial horror novel that aims to critique consumer culture.” (Zoomer)

"Kill the Mall is a book for those of us who love malls but are also conflicted by our complicity in the machinery of capitalism. I couldn't stop reading. Pasha Malla writes like a reincarnated Kafka." (Ian Williams, winner of the Giller Prize for Reproduction)