Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell audiobook by Robert G. Penner
Narrated by Euan Morton (2026)
COMING SEPT 29, 2026!
Pre-order the audiobook on Audible
About the novel
Victorian Britain is colonizing Hell itself: the demons have been subdued, the damned put to work on plantations, and a cast of colonists — a District Commissioner, a spiritualist, a railway engineer, orphaned girls, a missionary — stakes its claim on the infernal frontier. When a series of murders threatens war on the unconquered interior, Hell Undiminished, forces beyond Queen and Country may yet intervene.
Set as the Old Empire of sails and slavery gave way to the New Imperialism of steam and scientific racism, Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell is a raucous satire of the hubris that built our world — an epic as gripping as anything by Conrad, Forster, or Tolkien.
Critical reception of the novel
The following praise is for the print edition of Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell.
“Tastefully insane and morbidly fun, this witty novel is a delightfully realistic imagining of the attempt to colonize the damned. For fans of long-dead English humorists, sideways séances, misapplied logic, and terribly bright young women subject to clueless chaperones,
Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell is Dante’s
Inferno as envisioned by Monty Python. A sidesplitting pleasure.”
“The descent into hell is a delicious one…full of surprises and sharp turns and utter imagination. It is a masterpiece, intelligent and satirically brilliant.”
“Empire’s gonna empire. Victorian Brits are pushing ever further into the underworld’s heart of darkness but demonic Powers and Principalities are about to (and not about to) give them Hell. Kinda like
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — but smart, witty, imaginative, well-written and with something important to say about neo-colonialism.”
“Fueled by a conceit that could have been a classic Monty Python sketch, this deft, smooth novel refuses to stop at satire, moving beyond irony into a serious investigation of the implications that undergird its narrative superstructure.”
“Utterly engrossing, darkly funny, and as absurd and phantasmagoric as a Bosch painting.
Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell also offers a stark and keen examination of the very nature of humanity, of our history, in a way that only the literature of the absurd can.”
About Robert G. Penner
Robert G. Penner lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the author of the novels Strange Labour, one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Science Fiction Books of 2020, and The Dark King Swallows the World. He has published numerous short stories in a wide range of speculative and literary journals under both his own name and various pseudonyms.
Publication Details
Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell
Publisher
McNally Editions (print) / Audible Studios (audio)
Release Date
September 22, 2026 (print) / September 29, 2026 (audio)
Genre
Speculative Fiction, Alternate History, Satire, Post-Colonial Fiction
Links
Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell:
McNally Editions |
Robert G. Penner’s website
