Dadafarin: or, The Pessimism

Are you confused by the modern socially contagious phenomenon commonly known as ＂woke＂? Do you wonder how people who’d report you to the police for going for a walk suddenly decide it’s OK to join thousands of others at a demonstration in London on behalf of a guy who was killed in America? How men became women, and women who didn’t like sharing changing rooms and toilets with them became fascist Terfs? Imagine what this new world of pronouns, white fragilty and non-crime hate incidents would look like to someone from a completely different culture. That is the premise behind this amusing and timely satire by Allen Grove.

Dadafarin tells the story of a refugee who arrives on the south coast of England in a rubber dinghy during the Covid pandemic of summer 2020. Expecting to find himself in a country fabled far and wide for it’s history, culture and fairness, Dadafarin instead finds himself thrown into a fractured and unfamiliar world, where Covid-19 and the rise of BLM and identity politics have transformed the social and political landscape beyond his wildest imaginings.

Accommodated at an hotel in Kent, Dadafarin meets his new friend and mentor, Dr Anton Venngloss, chairperson of the charity Justice in Exile. Dr Venngloss helps Dadafarin come to grips with the new social order, so different to what he had imagined. Equipped with his new understanding, Dadafarin (Dada to his friends) soon finds himself immersed in the campaign for social justice. He attends a demonstration, parties with Antifa and falls in love, with unexpected consequences. A tragedy then leads to a meeting with a rock star and a famous politician, leading to a new opportunity.

Influenced by Voltaire’s satirical novella Candide, Dadafarin is the fruit of hundreds of hours of research conducted after the author found himself ＂cancelled＂ by several long-standing friends for the sin of quoting directly from BLM’s website. The result is an hilarious and informative snapshot of 2020’s Britain as seen through the eyes of a bemused outsider..