Hari Kunzru

Two ambitious young musicians are drawn into the dark underworld of blues-record collecting while navigating the fallout of a scam involving one's claim that a viral video of an unknown singer is a long-lost recording of a famous blues musician.

White Tears

From the widely acclaimed author of White Tears, a bold new novel about searching for order in a world that frames madness as truth. After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives--a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life--and soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. Wannsee is a place full of ghosts: Across the lake, the narrator can see the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution, and in his walks he passes the grave of the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist, who killed himself after deciding that "no happiness was possible here on earth." When some friends drag him to a party where he meets Anton, the creator of Blue Lives, the narrator begins to believe that the two of them are involved in a cosmic battle, and that Anton is "red-pilling" his viewers--turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview--ultimately forcing the narrator to wonder if he is losing his mind.

A Novel

Red Pill

2008. The California desert. A four-year-old autistic boy, Raj Matharu, disappears in the wilderness, plunging his wealthy New York parents into the surreal public hell of a media witch-hunt. But the desert is inexplicable and miraculous, and the Matharus' fate is bound up with that of others: a debauched British rock star, on the run from a failed relationship and the sordid excesses of his life; a former member of an extraterrestrial-worshipping cult, now middle-aged but still haunted by transcendent callings; and a teenage Iraqi refugee, who befriends a young black Marine while playing the role of 'Iraqi villager' in a military simulation exercise. Their lives converge in an odd, remote town, near a rock formation called The Pinnacles -- and among the tangled echoes and stories of all those who have travelled before them through this brutally powerful landscape. A branching and multilayered novel by one of our most acclaimed writers, and a compulsively readable journey into the twists and turns of a handful of human lives, Gods Without Men is a heartfelt exploration of our search for pattern and meaning in a random and chaotic universe.

Gods Without Men

Lonely, naïve, and insecure, Indian computer programmer Arjun finds his life and security destroyed when he is fired and, in order to keep his job and the woman he loves, unleashes a mischievous and destructive virus that wreaks havoc on computers around the globe. By the author of The Impressionist. Reprint.

Transmission

The Impressionist is Hari Kunzru's sweeping novel of India, empire and identity.In India, at the birth of the last century, an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out from his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Nath's odyssey of self-discovery - a journey that will take him from the streets of Agra, via the red light district of Bombay, to the brick cloisters of Oxford and beyond - as he struggles to understand who he really is.'Delectable, sweeping, empire-savaging, audaciously playful . . . Kunzru writes with wry certitude and cinematic precision' The New York Times'Grand, sprawling, extravagant, lyrical . . . A work so vibrant and richly imagined that you can smell the incense' Esquire'Epic in scale and rich in historical detail . . . the narrative is deft and swift . . . carrying the reader along effortlessly. This first novel has startling depth, ambition and craftmanship' Time OutHari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men, and the story collection Noise. He lives in New York.

The Impressionist

From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty, power, and capital’s influence on art and those who devote their lives to creating it. Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent Covid case. When Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of woodland only to find the last person he ever expected to see again: Alice, a former lover from his art school days. Their relationship was tumultuous and destructive, ultimately ending when she ghosted him and left for America with his best friend and fellow artist, Rob. In the twenty years since, their fortunes could not be more different: as Jay teeters on the edge of collapse, Alice and Rob have found prosperity in a life surrounded by beauty. Ashamed, Jay hopes she won’t recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask; when she does, she invites him to recover on the property—where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well—setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion. Gripping and brilliantly orchestrated, Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind.

A novel

Blue Ruin

My Revolutions

Ligaya Salazar

Laurie Britton Newell

"Commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Memory Palace forms the basis for an innovative exhibition in partnership with Sky Arts Ignition that explores the relationship between the written word and its visual interpretation. This volume includes preliminary drawings by 20 leading typographers, illustrators and graphic designers whose work features in the exhibition, alongside a contextual essay by the curators, Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar, and a graphic story by Robert Hunter"--Printed wrapper on bottom board.

Memory Palace

NOISE

Arkady Strugatsky

Boris Strugatsky

Olena Bormashenko

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely known as the greatest Russian writers of science fiction, and their 1964 novel Hard to Be a God is considered one of the greatest of their works. It tells the story of Don Rumata, who is sent from Earth to the medieval kingdom of Arkanar with instructions to observe and to influence, but never to directly interfere. Masquerading as an arrogant nobleman, a dueler and a brawler, Don Rumata is never defeated but can never kill. With his doubt and compassion, and his deep love for a local girl named Kira, Rumata wants to save the kingdom from the machinations of Don Reba, the First Minister to the king. But given his orders, what role can he play? Hard to Be a God has inspired a computer role-playing game and two movies, including Aleksei German's long-awaited swan song. Yet until now the only English version (out of print for over thirty years) was based on a German translation, and was full of errors, infelicities, and misunderstandings. This new edition—translated by Olena Bormashenko, whose translation of the authors' Roadside Picnic has received widespread acclaim, and supplemented with a new foreword by Hari Kunzru and an afterword by Boris Strugatsky, both of which supply much-needed context—reintroduces one of the most profound Soviet-era novels to an eager audience.

Hard to Be a God

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Original Selection The Wall Street businessman is about to become very wealthy—serious money, you understand—but while flying from New York to Silicon Valley to officially sell his startup, he has a very damaging, very disturbing, possibly destiny-altering dream. In this new story from Hari Kunzru, the explosive, wildly inventive, stunningly ambitious author of the acclaimed novel Gods Without Men, a titan of industry mustn’t forget that he was a boy once; and an English public school past can continue to haunt far after graduation. “Ink” is a cautionary tale rebooted for the startup age. An eBook short.

Lonely, naïve, and insecure, Indian computer programmer Arjun finds life and security destroyed when he is fired and, in order to keep his job and the woman he loves, unleashes a mischievous and destructive virus that wreaks havoc on computers around the globe. By the author of The Impressionist. 40,000 first printing.

'The book I wish I'd written? Whatever Hari Kunzru is publishing next' Aravind Adiga From the author of White Tears comes a breathtaking, state-of-the-world novel about one man's struggle to defend his values and create a reality free from the shadows of the past. 'From now on when you see something, you're seeing it because I want you to see it. When you think of something, it'll be because I want you to think about it...' And with those words, the obsession begins. A writer has left his family in Brooklyn for a three month residency at the Deuter Centre in Berlin, hoping for undisturbed days devoted to artistic absorption. When nothing goes according to plan, he finds himself holed up in his room watching Blue Lives, a violent cop show with a bleak and merciless worldview. One night at a party he meets Anton, the charismatic creator of the show, and strikes up a conversation. It is a conversation that leads him on a journey into the heart of moral darkness. A conversation thatthreatens to destroy everything he holds most dear, including his own mind. Red Pill is a novel about the alt-right, online culture, creativity, sanity and history. It tells the story of the 21st century through the prism of the centuries that preceded it, showing how the darkest chapters of our past haunt our present. More than anything, though, this is a novel about love and how it can endure in a world where everything else seems to have lost all meaning. Praise for White Tears 'Exquisitely attuned' Washington Post 'Electrifying, subversive and wildly original' TheNew Yorker 'A book that everyone should be reading right now' TIME Magazine 'Haunting, doom-drenched, genuinely and viscerally disturbing...' The Independent

Twice Upon a Time

At the age of fifteen, Pran Nath Razdan is thrown out onto the streets when the truth of his parentage is revealed, forcing him to re-invent himself over and over to survive as he journeys from Victorian India to Edwardian London where he learns to master his chameleon-like ability to transform himself into whoever and whatever he needs to fulfill his utmost desires. A first novel. 75,000 first printing.

Award-winning writer Kunzru takes an ultra-contemporary turn with the story of an Indian computer programmer whose luxurious fantasies about life in America are shaken when he accepts a California job offer.

In India, at the birth of the last century, an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out from his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Nathrs"s odyssey of self-discovery a journey that will take him from the streets of Agra, via the red light disrict of Bombay, to the green lawns of England and beyond as he struggles to understand who he really is.

White Tears is a ghost story, a terrifying murder mystery, a timely meditation on race, and a love letter to all the forgotten geniuses of American music and Delta Mississippi Blues. "An incisive meditation on race, privilege and music. Spanning decades, this novel brings alive the history of old-time blues and America’s racial conscience."—Rabeea Saleem, Chicago Review of Books Two twenty-something New Yorkers. Seth is awkward and shy. Carter is the glamorous heir to one of America's great fortunes. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Seth is desperate to reach for the future. Carter is slipping back into the past. When Seth accidentally records an unknown singer in a park, Carter sends it out over the Internet, claiming it's a long lost 1920s blues recording by a musician called Charlie Shaw. When an old collector contacts them to say that their fake record and their fake bluesman are actually real, the two young white men, accompanied by Carter's troubled sister Leonie, spiral down into the heart of the nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge, and exploitation.

Hari Kunzru

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