The Book of Festus is a shattered fable. In these poems, every object has a voice; every thing is awake. Festus wakes inside a myth - on a wharf in Halifax, Nova Scotia - and recalls nothing but a bicycle. As he looks for it, he thinks the city's thoughts. Upon a sidewalk over a buried river, he remembers what the city remembers. He steps past a skateboard park to a Mi'kmaq lagoon. He follows 17th century pioneer cattle to a fast food restaurant. A girl he once knew steps out of the fragments. Festus is an anagogic man, loser-hero of the first city, Ur, Halifax. This collection is a city's lucid dream of itself.

A collection of sayings by Festus Haggen, a character on the TV series Gunsmoke, with links to Biblical proverbs and Bible references.

Festus and his cat, Mercury, change their plans for a camping trip when the chickens insist on going along.

Mercury the cat tries to cheer up his grouchy old master Festus through elaborate plans to get him to go fishing.

Unable to continue with Christmas preparations because of his injured foot, old man Festus and his cat Mercury face a bleak Christmas until the neighbors come to the rescue.

Recent years have seen considerable growth in the media in Africa with increases in the number of newspapers and radio and television stations. At the same time there has been an increase in the number of arrests of journalists and broadcasters and various forms of censorship have been introduced. The essays in this volume examine press censorship, past and present, and bring a fresh perspective to the position of the mass media in the African continent.