Lon Orey’s satirical novel draws its power from the same source as Heller’s Catch-22 — the recognition that military institutions, particularly intelligence operations, generate absurdity at industrial scale. The comedy in Apricot Marmalade is not incidental; it is the novel’s argument.
Set in Vietnam-era Bangkok, the novel follows a US Army Military Intelligence unit whose defining characteristic is its spectacular ineffectiveness. Each character is precisely drawn as a particular species of institutional failure. Orey writes with the authority of someone who was actually there, and the detail shows.
The Thailand setting is the novel’s strongest element — steaming, vivid, impossible to ignore. This is sharply observed political satire in period dress.
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