"Characters from Shakespeare, Hollywood films and Greek mythology, along with other literary and cultural figures, wander homeless and penniless in a wonderfully evoked present-day Montreal in this brilliant, moving novel....a formidable and esoteric discourse on power, decadence and remembering."

"Majzels, a Montreal-born writer and translator, experiments with narrative form and philosophical speculation in his second novel, as he did in his well-received first effort, Hellman’s Scrapbook. City of Forgetting summons iconic outsiders, antiheroes, and rebels from history and literature, recasting them as homeless Montrealers. Unrecognized and uncherished, they live in makeshift camps on the muddy slopes of Mount Royal and along the waterfront, where they relive their pasts, and evade capture by unseen enemies. They wait, half in dread, for the future that their comrade Clytaemnestra defines as 'where hope collides with death'".

Selected by Montreal's The Gazette newspaper as one of the top ten books of the century on Montreal.

“Robert Majzels est le maître du collage érudit et de l’exercise postmoderne… Son texte envoûtant, riche d’images puissantes, est important parce qu’il annonce une nouvelle ère d’écrire Montréal.”

“A complex interweaving of the soul of rebellion with desire, and the contradictions of the city itself, founded in religious fervor, yet alienating and brutal in its modern incarnation.”

“A rich, remarkable novel that will stand up to several readings, rewarding the careful reader with each visit.”