Poor Man's Opera
Novel ~ Galleon Books 2026
(inside text)
Poor Man’s Opera is a wildly radical reimagining of William Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure. Set in a remote future where Canada is known as the Northlands and has been annexed by its authoritarian neighbour to the south, the Free Republic of America, where there used to be provinces and territories, there are now self-governing city-states spread out through a wilderness ravaged of its natural resources.
The story is set in the city-state of New Old York (at one time Toronto) and narrated by a gender-fluid Tarot reader who is an unofficial advisor to a high-ranking politician. Mayoff has written his novel in a faux Shakespearean language, mixed with modern colloquialisms, a smattering of French and hiphop and his own invented rhyming slang.
Praise for Poor Man’s Opera
“A fabulous fable of politics, identity and love where no-one and nothing is what you (or they) expect, where the reveal is a revelation, the transformation is sexual and the sex is transformational, where operatic surprise, comedy and drama are the stage for a serious examination of modern power and policy, Poor Man’s Opera is a wit-quickened card trick of a novel.”
Gary Barwin – author of Yiddish for Pirates, winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and The Comedian’s Book of the Dead
“Steven Mayoff’s audacious new novel, Poor Man’s Opera… is at once a dystopian fable, a Tarot reading, an opera libretto in narrative form, a sustained linguistic performance, and, at its sturdiest spine, a rewriting of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in speculative Canadian dress.”
Dr. Amy Tucker – The Third Shore (substack)
To read the whole review go to https://thethirdshore1.substack.com/p/some-rise-by-sin-a-review-of-poor
Excerpt from Poor Man’s Opera
'Tis at this vantage, what’s known as the get-go, that I reckon thou best be wise as to exactly who’s reeling out this spiel. Call me Solomon Fatima for the time as it stands. A puller of Tarot cards by trade. Do I make claim as a seer, a sibyl, a soothsayer? Perchance in my more mirror-besotted moments, I hook onto the fancy of possessing a higher-than-normal affinity with the spirit world. And yet, in the sober light of the day-to-day, I lean more to dubbing myself a storyteller.
Thou hath perceived how a sculptor eyeballs a raw slab of marble or a daunting block of granite then commences to chipping away the extraneous pieces until the three-dimensional image snoozing within is all that’s left among the dust and debris? In that self-same hocus-pocus, the tales exist in toto hidden within the cards until in alchemical fashion I spin them into recognizable glitter for the querent’s curious shell-like.
And yet the saga that I aim to relate here has altogether a different art form at its centre. Thumpety-thumping at the central blood-pump of my tale lies the soothing manifestation of music. Thou ken that music is but a kissing cousin to storytelling? Come to think of it, its bloodline doth not stray too far from sculpture either. Diggez-vous how sound waves carve and shape the air, that being the very self-same invisible current coursing in and out of our lungs whether we’re awake or asleep?
Ipso facto, 'tis the narrative meat and potatoes of music that leads us like somnambulists on a jaunt 'tween dream and reality. Avec musique, we’re the lot of us as blind as that tailless trinity of mice in the nursery rhyme, dependant on the wind-flapping shell-likes at the sides of our heads to lead us on a merry dance, all footloose and fleur-de-lys down whatever destined path we’re on.
'Tis no co-inkydink that our auditory organs possess the likeness of beach-strewn seashells, soaking up Sol’s rays while being enthralled by the melody of the shore-lapping tide. That sweetest lullaby of rushing nothingness. Today, tomorrow or the Doomsday next, the churning sea is bound to give up the secret sauce from its murky depths and turn all reverberation into meaning.
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