When it comes to conjuring twisted characters and darkly funny premises, Chuck Palahniuk can be counted alongside a select cabal of shock-tactic satirists that includes Bret Easton Ellis, Irvine Welsh and Dennis Cooper. From the underground brawlers turned urban anarchists in his brilliant Fight Club, to the last remaining member of a cult searching for counterparts in Survivor, Palahniuk has repeatedly returned to his tried and true themes: cartoonish violence, graphic sex, anti-capitalism and the disillusionment of the American dream. Interesting food for thought to be sure, but after choking it down time and time again, the flavour is, sadly, soon lost.

Tearing another page from the notebook of Welsh and his junkie comedies Trainspotting and The Acid House, Palahniuk penned his latest novel Pygmy in a dialect that is difficult to understand at first, yet reveals itself after several dozen pages. Written in first-person, broken English in a series of diary-style accounts, the story revolves around a mysterious foreign super-soldier from a totalitarian state only referred to as Agent Number 67 (or his racist nickname, Pygmy). Alongside several other young adult operatives, Pygymy is posing as an exchange student in a middle-American middle school, living with a host family while planning a terrorist plot.

Throughout its 241 pages and 36 quick chapters, Pygmy takes aim at many of Palahniuk’s (and Bill Maher’s) favourite targets: Wal-Mart culture, Christianity and what he describes as “this big, dumb country and its fat, dumb inhabitants.” Using rhetoric and repetition to hammer home the point — and make readers feel squeamish — the book’s titular character continually mentions alliterative martial arts moves he could use to kill (e.g. The Lashing Lynx or Whirling Wolverine) and quotes historic dictators he admires: “Quote villain emperor, accomplished huckster Adolf Hitler, ‘Great liars are also great magicians.’”

Pygmy has already been described as “The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park” — an appropriate mash-up comparison of high and low culture. The book is paranoid, political and ruthlessly subversive, while simultaneously super gross. To give just a few examples: There’s a rape scene within the first few chapters, and an endless string of references to another character’s sex toys. There’s nothing here that’ll disturb readers as much as Palahniuk’s 2005 novel Haunted (or its notorious short story “Guts”). In fact, Pygymy’s romantic subplot is somewhat cute, despite its creepiness. Nonetheless, this book should not wisely be recommended to the squeamish.

Like almost everything in Palahniuk’s oeuvre, Pygymy is unique, clever and skillfully concocted, yet so self-indulgent that it soon becomes tiresome. Even worse, the ending is a serious letdown (if you even make it that far). In the end, while we’re meant to gain a glimpse into the Midwest through the eyes of an indoctrinated killer, one can’t help but entertain the notion that the author has a little bit of Pygmy buried not so deep within his own subconscious.