Société by Alexander Helas

A novel portraying free will as mankind's bravest art. Christian Matters is a neurotic twenty-nine year old architect living in Chicago, USA. After a bizarre episode throws him off his morning routine, he abandons his promising career, girlfriend, and home for a life-changing journey to San Francisco, where he meets a cavalier aristocrat named Lester Rothschild and his beautifully extravagant love, fortepianist Ella Athens. Mysterious and insane, Lester takes Christian on his adventure to open Société, the most luxurious entertainment complex at the heart of the world's richest city. But, with the chance meeting of an unlikely visitor and the sudden death of a lover, colliding events lead Christian to unravel the true ambitions behind the greatly anticipated opening of Société, and discovers the fate of something much greater is at stake. In his modern and magically profound debut novel, Alexander Helas delivers a masterful, thought-provoking vision on the struggle of free will at the hands of society's quest for progress. For some we are heroes. For others we are villains. Tomorrow, we may become something else entirely.