Visar resultat för..."Leaving the Atocha Station"

'The sharpest and funniest novel I read this year' Craig Brown, Mail on SundayA hilarious, intelligent cult classic, from one of the most celebrated contemporary novelists. Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid. Fuelled by strong coffee and self-prescribed tranquillizers, every day is a fresh attempt to establish a sense of self and an attitude towards his art. Not helped by his imperfect grasp of Spanish, Adam struggles with the underlying suspicion that his relationships, his reactions, even his entire personality are just as fraudulent as his poetry. Yet while his self-obsession runs riot he is at risk of missing the bigger and more urgent things that threaten to change the world around him in sudden and dramatic ways.One of the funniest and best-loved debut novels of contemporary times, Leaving the Atocha Station is a profound exploration of the creative impulse.'Packed full of gags... Intensely and unusually brilliant' Geoff Dyer, Observer

Shortlisted for the Folio PrizeInternationally celebrated by critics and readers alikeA dazzling and utterly original novel about making art, love, and children during the twilight of an empireIn the past year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child. Now, in a New York of increasingly frequent superstorms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.In prose that Jonathan Franzen has called 'hilarious... cracklingly intelligent... and original in every sentence', Lerner's new novel charts an exhilarating course through the contemporary landscape of sex, friendship, memory, art and politics, and captures what it is like to be alive right now.'Brilliant... Contemplative and tender... I doubt I'll read a finer novel this year' - Sunday Telegraph'Reading Ben Lerner gives me the tingle at the base of my spine that happens whenever I encounter a writer of true originality. He is a courageous, immensely intelligent artist who panders to no one and yet is a delight to read. Anyone interested in serious contemporary literature should read Ben Lerner, and 10:04 is the perfect place to start' - Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot

UNFINISHED BUSINESS focuses on an ordinary suburban office worker, fundamentally weak but always keeping his eyes fixed on some horizon where a heightened, romantic, better world must surely exist. Faced with the regular stuff of life - work, aspiration, marriage, age, divorce, bereavement - his ordinary plight is sharpened, becoming increasingly urgent. Having lived in a modern condition, confusing pleasure with happiness, wanting the dream to deliver, what do you do when you notice the shadows begin to lengthen on the lawn?

UNFINISHED BUSINESS focuses on an ordinary suburban office worker, fundamentally weak but always keeping his eyes fixed on some horizon where a heightened, romantic, better world must surely exist. Faced with the regular stuff of life - work, aspiration, marriage, age, divorce, bereavement - his ordinary plight is sharpened, becoming increasingly urgent. Having lived in a modern condition, confusing pleasure with happiness, wanting the dream to deliver, what do you do when you notice the shadows begin to lengthen on the lawn?

A genre-blending work of autofiction and memoir from the cult author of The Giro Playboy'Essential reading for new dads' LIAS SAOUDITotally sublime. Every sentence radiates' RICHARD MILWARD'A book that changes how you see the world' ALI MILLAR'A rare, companionable and gorgeous book' ROB DOYLEIn Strangers on the Shore, Michael Smith - author of cult classic The Giro Playboy, which captured the arty demi-monde of Shoreditch gentrifying into a hipster hellscape - stays one step ahead of the property developers as he stumbles through the uncanny psychic landscape of Hastings, in an astonishing work of autofiction that explores the experience of becoming a father and the disarming grief of leaving your youth and its dreams behind.The flâneuring Michael at the centre of the book has moved down to the 'dogshit capital of the South Coast,' started a family and opened a bar. He finds himself pouring wine in a 'drinking town with a fishing problem,' philosophising, procrastinating, morbidly obsessed with Aleister Crowley, who died in poverty in a BnB in this shabby seaside resort full of artistes and occult morris dancers.A book about what it is like to live on the margins, sliding into a precarious middle age in turbulent times, both giving up and starting a-new, Strangers on the Shore is deeply and unashamedly romantic, whilst also angry about the dystopian Britain we've sleepwalked into. Revered by Andrew Weatherall as 'the acid house Montaigne' and The Idler as 'Rimbauld on the dole,' Michael Smith has written an endlessly moving book of transcendent beauty about fathers and songs and the pleasures of an introspective life.

WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE'A hypnotic dissection of memory, trauma and belonging'New Statesman'This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemed'Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police'Here we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silence'Yoko Tawada, author of The Last Children of Tokyo'An eerie, shimmering fever dream . . . strange and beautiful'Jenny Mustard, author of Okay DaysIn the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Göttingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Tōhoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation.The reunited friends share a past that's a world away from the tranquillity of Göttingen. Yet Nomiya's spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel.With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past.

WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE'A hypnotic dissection of memory, trauma and belonging'New Statesman'This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemed'Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police'Here we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silence'Yoko Tawada, author of The Last Children of Tokyo'An eerie, shimmering fever dream . . . strange and beautiful'Jenny Mustard, author of Okay DaysIn the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Göttingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Tōhoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation.The reunited friends share a past that's a world away from the tranquillity of Göttingen. Yet Nomiya's spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel.With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past.

WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE'A hypnotic dissection of memory, trauma and belonging'New Statesman'This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemed'Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police'Here we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silence'Yoko Tawada, author of The Last Children of Tokyo'An eerie, shimmering fever dream . . . strange and beautiful'Jenny Mustard, author of Okay DaysIn the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Göttingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Tōhoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation.The reunited friends share a past that's a world away from the tranquillity of Göttingen. Yet Nomiya's spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel.With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past.

From award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill comes a masterful and moving novel in the tradition of Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station and Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be.At 11:04 a.m. on January 21st, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother’s bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself.From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son’s enduring love for his mother.

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR'I think the future of the novel is here' Sally Rooney'A hugely moving American masterpiece' Max PorterAdam Gordon is a senior at Topeka High School, class of '97, the son of two psychologists. He is a renowned debater and orator, an aspiring poet, and - although it requires a lot of posturing and weight lifting - one of the cool kids, but he's also one of the seniors who brings a loner, Darren Eberheart, into the social scene, with disastrous effects. The Topeka School is a riveting story about the challenges of raising a good son in a culture of toxic masculinity. It is also a startling prehistory of the present: the collapse of public speech, the tyranny of trolls and the new right, and the ongoing crisis of identity among white men. 'His most discerning, ambitious, innovative and timely novel to date... Deeply inspired' Maggie Nelson

THE END OF ALICE treads the wafer-thin line between the evil and the everyday, following the correspondence of two paedophiles. One, the narrator, is a child-killer, serving his twenty-third year in prison. The other, his seemingly sweet admirer, is a nineteen-year-old woman, intent on seducing a young neighbourhood boy. Teetering on the knife's edge between the American Dream and the American Nightmare, THE END OF ALICE unpicks the darkness of inconceivable desire, and the destruction and horror left in its wake.