Abstract

Set in Windsor, Ontario, Mongrel contains five chapters, each of which is narrated by a different adolescent character. Mixing tragedy, black comedy and pathos, their five interwoven stories span twelve manic hours on June tenth, 1999, when the United States ended its seventy-eight day bombing of Serbia. The bombing of a small, weak nation by the world's uncontested superpower mirrors the mutually exploitive relationships that develop among the characters and contextualizes a central thematic concern of the novel: that exploitation is one of the most basic features of human intercourse. The five narratives are inextricably linked, in that each one overlaps and influences the outcome of the other, and they all draw together to one end.