Byron Rempel
NEW BOOK
A new novel—where comedy and revolution collide
A riotous, generous, expansive novel, The Apparent Motion of Heavenly Bodies follows the exploits of Ignacio Bravo—lover, failed archaeology student, dreamer, and only the most accidental of revolutionaries—through the badly organized, barely funded, impulsively led Now and Then Revolution in Mexico’s Yucatán.
WHAT’S UP
Breakfast in the Serengeti
Breakfast in the Serengeti takes you on safari through autobiography, outright lies, and the trouble with being Byron. We travel from the mythical land of the “Happy Valley set” where Karen Blixen lived Out of Africa, to the not always happy Africans living in the area today; from the safari driver conducting them safely through elephants, lions and rhinoceroses, to the same driver’s move to Washington to get a less dangerous job driving for Door Dash—just in time for the assault on the Capitol, an international pandemic, and the establishment of ICE.
On safari in Kenya and Tanzania, unsure of where he’s going in his life, Byron discovers the birthplace of man, only to find 3-million year old footprints leading nowhere; recalls how he was ordained by his grandma to bring the word of God to the heathen, but finds everyone already converted; attempts to pack for the safari with a 33 pound limit, a feat more challenging than the safari itself; comes down with a fever in his luxury text (with flushing toilets), and ends up speaking to Burton and Speakes, who discovered the Nile just around the corner; and learns that, when surrounded by the most dangerous animals on the earth, the one to really watch out for is an undercooked chicken.
About
Byron Rempel ran away from his Mennonite home in a Canadian prairie village to join a Parisian circus, which was followed by a turn as assistant elephant caretaker for a travelling Italian circus. A fascination for jungle life led to a gig as writer-in-residence for a Maya archaeological dig in Belize. Among other professions, Byron has tended bar in London, picked grapes in Beaujolais and picked stones in Manitoba.