Joanna Kavenna

From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writing comes a blistering, satirical novel about life under a global media and tech corporation that knows exactly what we think, what we want, and what we do--before we do. One corporation has made a perfect world based on a perfect algorithm . . . now what to do with all these messy people? Lionel Bigman is dead. Murdered by a robot. Guy Matthias, the philandering founder and CEO of the mega-corporation Beetle, insists it was human error. But was it? Either the predictive algorithms of Beetle's supposedly omniscient 'lifechain' don't work, or, they've been hacked. Both scenarios are impossible to imagine and signal the end of Beetle's technotopia and life as we know it. Dazzlingly original and darkly comic, Zed asks profound questions about who we are, what we owe to one another, and what makes us human. It describes our moment--the ugliness and the beauty--perfectly. Kavenna is a prophet who has seen deeply into the present--and thrown back her head and laughed.

A Novel

'Smart, strange, coping with death through Light' Margaret Atwood 'Extraordinary, wise, funny, adventurous' A. L. Kennedy 'So utterly startling and inventive, it's almost an act of resistance' Miriam Toews 'I couldn't put it down. A cult following seems certain' Literary Review 'Refreshing as well as disconcerting to read a novel that sets aside convention so resolutely' Guardian 'Opts to push the boundaries of what the novel is' Telegraph 'A comic metaphysical thriller' Scotland on Sunday In this darkly ironic novel - a quest for truth, a satire, an elegy - Joanna Kavenna displays fearless originality and wit in confronting the strangeness of reality and how we contend with the death of those we love. Beautiful, ethereal drawings by Oly Ralfe illustrate this haunting journey through time, space and human understanding.

A Field Guide to Reality

A critically acclaimed satire from one of the Granta Best of Young British Writers Cassandra White is a woman on a mission. Her Lakeland farm may be falling apart, but at least she’s escaped the madness of modern life. But when her valley is invaded by bankers buying up second homes, she’s determined to put up a fight. What begins as a hare-brained scheme with a few unruly locals soon has the whole community taking up arms—and, before she knows it, Cassandra’s leading a revolution.

Come to the Edge

From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writers, an epic novel of childbirth--past, present, and future The year is 1865. In Vienna, Dr. Ignasz Semmelweiss has been hounded into an asylum by his medical peers, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. In present-day London, Bridget Hughes juggles her young son, husband, and mother as she plans her home birth, unprepared for the trial she is about to endure. Somewhere in 2135, in a world where humans are birthed and raised in breeding farms, Prisoner 730004 is on trial for concealing a pregnancy. Through three stories spanning centuries, acclaimed novelist Joanna Kavenna explores the most basic plight of women, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futurisic vision of technological oppression. Poised at the midpoint is Bridget, whose fervent belief in the wisdom of nature is tested in one of the most gripping accounts of labor to appear in fiction. Original, powerful, and played out against a vast canvas, The Birth of Love is at once a novel about the creation of human life, science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.

The Birth of Love

Traces the author's extensive research into the ancient ice civilization, describing her travels through Iceland, Greenland, the arctic wilderness, and other frozen terrains; her learning through the works of other writers and explorers; and her discoveries about the Thule Society. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

In Search of the Lost Land of Thule

The Ice Museum

Joanna Kavenna went north in search of the Atlantis of the Arctic, the mythical land of Thule. Seen once by an Ancient Greek explorer and never found again, mysterious Thule came to represent the vast and empty spaces of the north. Fascinated for many years by Arctic places, Kavenna decided to travel through the lands that have been called Thule, from Shetland to Iceland, Norway, Estonia, and Greenland. On her journey, she found traces of earlier writers and travellers, all compelled by the idea of a land called Thule: Richard Francis Burton, William Morris, Anthony Trollope, as well as the Norwegian Polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen. She met wilderness-lovers; poets writing epics about ice; Inuit musicians and Polar scientists trying to understand the silent snows. But she came to discover that a darkness also inhabits Thule: the Thule Society, obsessed with the purity of the Nordic peoples; the 'war children' - the surviving progeny of Nazi attempts to foster an Aryan race; as well as ice-bound relics of the Cold War. Finally she arrived in Svalbard, a beautiful Arctic archipelago, at the edge of the frozen ocean. Blending travelogue, reportage, memoir, and literary essay, Joanna Kavenna explores the changing life of the far North in the 20th Century. The Ice Museum is a mesmerising story of idealism and ambition, wars and destruction, survival and memories, set against the haunting backdrop of the northern landscape.

Virginia Woolf

Essays on the Self

A legend, a land once seen and then lost forever, Thule was a place beyond the edge of the maps, a mystery for thousands of years. And to the Nazis, Thule was an icy Eden, birthplace of Nordic “purity.” In this exquisitely written narrative, Joanna Kavenna wanders in search of Thule, to Shetland, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland, and Svalbard, unearthing the philosophers, poets, and explorers who claimed Thule for themselves, from Richard Francis Burton to Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. Marked by breathtaking snowscapes, haunting literature, and the cold specter of past tragedies, this is a wondrous blend of travel writing and detective work that is impossible to set down. RVIEW: Thule, real or not, is ripe and beguiling material for a literary and geographic adventurer, and Kavenna is formidable on both fronts. . . . Highly cerebral, erudite, refreshing. (The New York Times Book Review)

Grieving over the death of her mother and confused about life, Rosa Lane, a successful young journalist and dedicated urbanite, unexpectedly quits her job and embarks on a search for enlightenment that brings her face to face with faithless lovers, the betrayal of so-called friends, and other realities of life. By the author of The Ice Museum. A first novel. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Inglorious

From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writers, an epic novel of childbirth—past, present, and future The year is 1865. In Vienna, Dr. Ignasz Semmelweiss has been hounded into an asylum by his medical peers, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. In present-day London, Bridget Hughes juggles her young son, husband, and mother as she plans her home birth, unprepared for the trial she is about to endure. Somewhere in 2135, in a world where humans are birthed and raised in breeding farms, Prisoner 730004 is on trial for concealing a pregnancy. Through three stories spanning centuries, acclaimed novelist Joanna Kavenna explores the most basic plight of women, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futurisic vision of technological oppression. Poised at the midpoint is Bridget, whose fervent belief in the wisdom of nature is tested in one of the most gripping accounts of labor to appear in fiction. Original, powerful, and played out against a vast canvas, The Birth of Love is at once a novel about the creation of human life, science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.

“[An] insightful, unsettling look at how technology impacts our lives. . .Kavenna has skillfully made our present feel like dystopian fiction.” USA TODAY Named a Best Book of 2020 by USA TODAY From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writing comes a blistering, satirical novel about life under a global media and tech corporation that knows exactly what we think, what we want, and what we do—before we do. One corporation has made a perfect world based on a perfect algorithm . . . now what to do with all these messy people? Lionel Bigman is dead. Murdered by a robot. Guy Matthias, the philandering founder and CEO of the mega-corporation Beetle, insists it was human error. But was it? Either the predictive algorithms of Beetle's supposedly omniscient 'lifechain' don't work, or, they've been hacked. Both scenarios are impossible to imagine and signal the end of Beetle's technotopia and life as we know it. Dazzlingly original and darkly comic, Zed asks profound questions about who we are, what we owe to one another, and what makes us human. It describes our moment—the ugliness and the beauty—perfectly. Kavenna is a prophet who has seen deeply into the present—and thrown back her head and laughed.

Rosa Lane is a fashionable journalist in her thirties, already the picture of London achievement. Her handsome boyfriend is something in politics and her other friends are confident, prosperous and ambitious. But one afternoon, staring at her computer screen at work, she fails to see the point, walks out of her job - and begins her long fall from modern grace.

Tim Maughan

Ned Beauman

Matthew De Abaitua

Adam Rothstein

Marek Kohn

Jane Rogers

Brendan Byrne

The second volume of Arc continues with an issue that wants to peel back the futuristic shine. So we bettered ourselves, had us a couple of revolutions - agricultural, industrial - and then before we knew it our inventions had raised the seas and fried the atmosphere, reshuffled our knowledge and commodified our pleasures; they even stole our privacy. Our lives are good, but not fair at all - and signs are we’re coming to a stormy end. Our masters tell us they’ll figure things out. With predictions and scenarios, models and forecasts, they’ll find a way through the coming storms and shortages. But what if they can’t? What if it’s all moonshine, and they’re just slapping on chromewash to cover their panic and powerlessness? In Chromewash original stories scratch and scuff the oh-so-shiny prediction business. Ned Beauman plays the markets, Jane Rogers puts a market price on identity, Tim Maughan games the art market, and Matthew De Abaitua wonders what happens when creatives get destructive. Also in this issue, Joanna Kavenna learns to mistrust Al Gore’s first-person plural, and M. John Harrison examines the special weapons and tactics of English Heritage. Medical ethicist Peter Hajek’s modest proposal tackles an ageing planet; Adam Rothstein spins a ghost story out of vapourware; Marek Kohn decides that the past has a future, too; and Brendan Byrne recalls the moment modern statecraft went cyberpunk.

Joanna Kavenna

Books

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