Brownout On Breadfruit Boulevard is the most entertaining and controversial of Mo's five novels. Wildly violent, raunchy and hilarious, the story follows the career of Victoria Init - the consort of a middling Philippine politician who should be entering her prime of life. Distracted by an ambition to put her dusty provincial fiefdom on the wider cultural map, she becomes enmeshed in a series of complex events as horrific as they are hilarious, intertwining gun law and political correctness and a wide cast of international characters. Set in Macau, the Phillppines, Japan, and New York, Mo's brilliant novel can be read as a revenger's tragedy, a comedy of polygot manners, or as the newest instalment in his candid commentary on the waxing and waning of the struggle between East and West.