Dimitri Nasrallah is a novelist and educator from Montreal, Que.. His latest book, The Bleeds, is a speculative thriller that charts the fortunes of a fictional country on the eve of the Arab Spring.

'The Bleeds' of the title are a father and son pair of dictators who have run their country with no regard for the people who live there. Turning the conventions of the political novel on its head, Nasrallah's book explores the corrosion of luxury in the midst of conflict.

"I began to think about the notion of revolutions and the narrative we apply to them that is really removed from what is actually happening within those given environments. I decided I wanted to approach the subject matter from the perspective of the people who orchestrated civil strife: the autocrats and dictators who are behind these political scenarios.

"I wanted to see if I could imagine the other side of the power structure. The Bleeds is a family of autocrats in an invented country located somewhere between the Middle East and Central Asia. It gained independence from the British in 1961 and the Bleeds were the revolutionary founding family."

"The name 'Bleed' for me comes from the Arabic word for someone who thinks too highly of themselves. Someone who is essentially an egoist. Blanco Bleed inherited the country and led it for its first 17 years. His son Mustafa Bleed took over after he was assassinated, and all that revolutionary fervour hardened into a dictatorship."

"We start at the first re-election campaign for the third Bleed: Vadim. He is neither as revolutionarily minded as his grandfather, nor as authoritarian as his father. He is someone who has been corrupted or corroded by all the spoils that they have gained. So it's about fathers' and sons' responsibility and, ultimately, how that family dynamic ends up affecting an entire nation and region."