2021/043: A Country of Ghosts -- Margaret Killjoy

2021/043: A Country of Ghosts -- Margaret Killjoy

"‘Hron’ means ‘ghost?’ Your country is named ‘ghost?’”
Nola nodded, but Sorros answered. “When it started, I think the idea was that the whole concept of having a name, of needing to name your country, really only mattered in the context of comparing ourselves with other societies. And what are ghosts? Ghosts are invisible and you can’t hurt them, but they haunt you by the memory of their presence. The refugees really liked that angle, the idea of being an invisible country that still affects those around it." [loc. 2022]

The setting is an imaginary world with a nineteenth-century ambience, and a journalist -- Dinos Horacki -- who is tasked with reporting from a war zone. Horacki's job is to write propaganda disguised as impartial reportage, focussing on war hero Dolan Wilder and his expedition to subdue the natives in a newly-conquered area.

What Wilder doesn't know (or doesn't care about) and Horacki only slowly realises is that these aren't isolated settlements but part of an anarchist non-country called Hron.( no spoilers )