Shortlisted: Hamilton Literary Awards, Fiction Prize (best novel) 2016Villis - a cranky, retired anthropologist and survivor of Stalin's GULAG work prisons - walks daily in The Pearl, an unspoiled frill of forest, along with his long-time friend, Bipin. They banter about the nature of man, of gods, and of what Bipin calls the World Wise Web. They dream of a trip to Easter Island to see the stout and silent monoliths that hunker on the cliff edges of that barren south seas place. Everything is connected, Bipin believes. There are no coincidences. So, when a cerebrally challenged young man invades The Pearl on an obnoxious all-terrain vehicle, chewing up trails and threatening amphibians, Bipin seeks the cosmic meaning inherent in this assault. Villis, on the other hand, wants to wage war. Villis' and Bipin's naive efforts to dispel the ATV-man from The Pearl spiral into a rollicking chaos of confusion, involving celebrity impersonators, visions of cavemen, and a time portal swirling from within the vibrating heart of The Pearl.The Last Year of Confusion is a thought provoking, at times irreverent and darkly comic, commentary on the weightiness of humankind's footprints upon our planet.