Novel. This unique, collaborative book, a novel of youth in 1961, as seen somewhat later by its four authors, blurs the lines between fiction and facts, challenging both the boundaries of narrative and the rules of biography. The end-result is an exuberant, hilarious novel of an emergent generation of poets in 1960's Vancouver, often landing somewhere between minute detail and phobic incertitude: M stood on the side of the Upper Levels Highway and tried with all his might to extricate an insect that had been carried in the wash of a passing Rolls Royce and plunged into M's ear. A passing motorist mistook his gestures for antic hitch-hiking, and yanked the family Turbocharger to a stop a hundred feet in front of the gnat-maddened man. PICCOLO MONDO incisively chronicles the coming of age of a generation, a city and a literary culture.