Synopsis:
Some families have skeletons in their closets. This one has a demon in its boardroom.
When Maris Berisha was nine years old, she heard something scratching at the walls of her family’s penthouse. It felt like something malevolent was there, watching them.
The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed.
At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.
Review:
A sleek and corporate horror novella, with nods to Poe, Alma Katsu’s “Fiend,” is as addictive as it is acidic. A story that reeks of corruption and lobbying and the antiseptic tang of sterile ambition, it is hard not to giggle and kick your feet as power plays unravel, downfalls come about and karma is served. “Fiend,” whilst cathartic in nature, serves as a warning, one about the instability of empires built on blood and the brittle, treacherous nature of relationships propped up only by status and mutual benefit. It is a novella about greed and hatred, its caustic spread, and ability to hollow out every vestige of good, leaving ruin in its wake. In her latest, Katsu shows that blood can curdle, and is not always thicker than water- she does so in style. Nihilistic and smart, “Fiend,” combines corporate satire and gothic rot, and is out from Titan in the UK and Putnam in the US, September 16th.
We follow the Berisha family. Zef, the patriarch, must be one of the most powerful men in the world. He is the CEO of a highly successful business, the head of one of Albania’s most influential families, and has an expert legal and PR team at his beck and call. Of course, most of Zef’s problems have a convenient habit of working themselves out though. Dead whistleblowers, irretrievable evidence, scandals simply collapse… whilst Berisha business practices may be untied to ethics, they are certainly tied to something, and it holds the family in its grip as tightly as Zef Berisha holds the world in his.
Our cast of characters are designed primarily to repulse us. They clash almost directly with our sense of humanity, our morality and, crucially, with each other. Zef’s eldest Dardan is set to inherit his father’s place in the company and family, a prospect that gnaws at him, almost as much as it does his sister Maris who believes she’s far better suited to the role. Nora, the youngest Berisha, apparently can’t stomach the unethical practices of her father’s business, nor the legacy her siblings look to continue- but neither is she ready to sever the life of privilege afforded by such corruption. The three Berisha siblings are all in their own way disturbed, a little unpalatable let’s say, yet that was not always the case. Katsu’s use of the dual timeline forces the reader to grapple with the fact that the children were not born bad. This allows room for commentary upon nature vs nurture, and how it is the case that hate, breeds hate.
The issue of class is a prevalent one in “Fiend.” The Berisha family is one obsessed with bloodlines, the idea of preserving the family name and the power associated with it through a series of carefully considered marriages and alliances. Morality almost becomes irrelevant, so long as status is maintained, the Berisha legacy lasts, and a man (we’ll discuss this shortly) remains to run the dynasty. The Berishas exist at such an altitude of wealth and influence that the repercussions of their actions simply do not reach them. The earthly consequences of their machinations go unnoticed by them. The illegal work carried out in their factories? Barely registers as wrong. The corruption of members of congress? Not a problem, until it’s used as a threat against the business. Workers, whistleblowers and communities are crushed beneath the Berisha empire, and are represented as mere abstractions. Katsu demonstrates how money can dull the senses, and privilege can render the most unconscionable acts ordinary.
Maris is not a likeable protagonist, at least not by any traditional metric, but one can’t help but share some of her frustrations. The unashamed sexism she’s met with by her father, an issue that extends to her sister Nora too, is not a personal slight, but an ancient, sexist hierarchy that has been allowed to follow the Berishas into the modern day. The main obstacle, implicitly, explicitly, that Maris has to overcome, to get to the very top, is not her humanity or morality or beliefs, but pure sexism. This is the case not only in regard to leading the Berisha clan, but her role in the company, reflecting the rampant misogyny that does take place in corporate settings.
Often, tragedy is just that. It just happens, and nobody is to blame. “Fiend,” however, is devoid of cruel twists of fate, accidents and misfortunes. In her latest, Katsu peels back the glossy veneer of corporate America and tackles issues of class, sexism, corruption and hatred that writhe beneath. A novella that is ALMOST entirely believable, “Fiend,” leaves no manicured hand unbloodied. Sleek, cathartic goodness that I couldn’t help but tear through, Katsu continues to excel, constructing empires only to strike a match and watch them burn.
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