Squirly Fern (SF) grows up in a Tokyo fish cannery, his visions of the West gleaned from his mother’s favourite Elvis movies. As a teenager, he receives a letter and plane ticket from his estranged father in Melbourne, urging him to come and stay. When he arrives, SF learns his father is a rich and famous scientist dabbling in cloning … and that’s when the book gets weird; people become pigs, pigs become people and SF must battle with Pauline, the mother of all genetically enhanced hogs.

Dando creates a believable and genuinely unsettling vision of a commercially enhanced Melbourne. Like Max Barry, he has an eye for consumerist double-binds and a wicked sense of humour to match. Oink Oink Oink is a savage take on the world and what we could become. Though not for the weak of heart or stomach (a fair few people get eaten), the book has a deeply humanistic edge. In SF, we find a character slowly growing sane, a voice of reason amidst surgical enhancement and product patriotism. For fans of quality science fiction, and anyone wanting to venture outside the box.