NAKED DEFIANCE. A Comedy of Menace

A provocative and hilarious interrogation of society's most enlightened impulses, and a startling challenge to the increasing polarization and ideological entrenchment of our time.

At the turn of the 21st century, washed up one-hit-wonder Florian Moore finds new creative life in a pseudo-Marxist, clothing-optional performance art group led by the mysterious Ganbold Mirzoyan. The members of Naked Defiance enact brief esoteric exhibitions to disrupt the daily routines of commercial culture—without drawing too much attention to themselves.


Things soon go awry, however, as members are targeted by a stalker and Mirzoyan is taken into police custody, never to be heard from again. Disillusioned and disaffected, characters wrestle for control of the collective—and of the narrative—as forest fires encroach and a once-energetic optimism turns progressively bleak.


NAKED DEFIANCE is a story of idealists seeking a richer engagement with life, who are ultimately repressed by the intrusion of politics and ideology. It is a comedy of menace, exposing the surreal absurdity of a world unwittingly at war with itself, seeking to remind us we can ill afford to play the fiddle (or the Roland TR-808 synthesizer) while the world burns.

Patrik Sampler‘s debut climate change novel, The Ocean Container, was published in 2017 by Ninebark Press. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Millions, and The Scofield. Sampler has been a contributing editor for the surrealist journal Peculiar Mormyrid and devoted much of a postgraduate degree to the late-career work of Abe Kobo. He lives in British Columbia.