Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest.

Little Emperor Syndrome
by David Thomas Henry Wright

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Little Emperor Syndrome is a web-based work of narrative fiction that follows the decline of an upper middle-class Australian family across generations. Its elegantly simple technology—html and javascript—is applied in the service of a wickedly complex narrative: timeline-jumping, interweaving, multithreaded, colour-coded. The author has here introduced a stunning number of permutations for experiencing the different modes and yet still the story works as a cohesive whole.

It’s rare these days that I am truly taken aback by a work of web-based fiction, but that is indeed what happened when I first read Little Emperor Syndrome. A remarkable feat of narrative craft, this work was the recent winner of the QUT Digital Literature category at the Queensland Literary Awards.

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