Olivia Sudjic

"A couple drive from London to coastal Provence. Anya is preoccupied with what she feels is a relationship on the verge; unequal, precarious. Luke, reserved, stoic, gives away nothing. As the sun sets one evening, he proposes, and they return to London engaged.But planning a wedding does little to settle Anya’s unease. As a child, she escaped from Sarajevo, and the idea of security is as alien now as it was then. When social convention forces Anya to return, she begins to change. The past she sought to contain for as long as she can remember resurfaces, and the hot summer builds to a startling climax. Lean, sly and unsettling, Asylum Road is about the many borders governing our lives: between men and women, assimilation and otherness, nations, families, order and chaos.What happens, and who do we become, when they break down?"--Provided by publisher.

Asylum Road

A personal essay on exposure, auto-fiction, internet feminism and the anxiety epidemic. Last year Olivia Sudjic published Sympathy, a novel about surveillance and connection in the internet age. If a debut novel is written by a woman, it is often read and discussed as if it were a memoir. Suddenly Sudjic found herself shoved under the microscope, subject to same surveillance apparatus she had dissected in her novel. In this incisive personal essay, Olivia Sudjic draws on her experience to examine the damaging expectations that attend any young female artist, as well the strategies by which they might be evaded.

Exposure

“Packed with tension, pathos, and vitality . . . This is a potent first novel from a formidable talent.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune “The best fictional account I’ve read of the way the internet has shaped our inner lives.” — Guardian (UK) At twenty-three Alice Hare, a loner, arrives in New York with only the vaguest of plans: to find a city to call home. Instead she discovers the online profile of a Japanese writer called Mizuko Himura, whose stories blur the line between autobiography and fiction. Alice becomes infatuated with Mizuko from afar, convinced this stranger’s life holds a mirror to her own. Realities multiply as Alice closes in on her “internet twin,” staging a chance encounter and inserting herself into his orbit. When Mizuko disappears, Alice is alone and adrift again. Tortured by her silence, Alice uses the only tool at her disposal, writing herself back into Mizuko’s story, with disastrous consequences. “A smart and lyrical evocation of that murky emotional terrain between our online and offline selves.” — Vice (UK) “At once a riveting mystery and a literary tour de force, Sympathy had me spellbound from the first page to the last.” — Emily Gould, author of Friendship

Sympathy

Naja Marie Aidt

Christina Hesselholdt

Enrique Vila-Matas

Joanna Walsh

Jakuta Alikavazovic

Vi Khi Nao

Jeaan-Baptiste del Amo

Mara Coson

Tools for Extinction

un ensayo sobre la epidemia de la ansiedad

Expuesta

Alice Hare tiene veintitrés años, acaba de terminar Filosofía y decide regresar a Nueva York para pasar tiempo con su abuela enferma y dejar atrás la Inglaterra en la que ha crecido, y con ella su complicado pasado familiar (un padre desaparecido, una madre manipuladora y obsesiva...). Alice idealiza una breve época de su infancia en que vivió con sus padres en Japón: dado que era demasiado pequeña como para recordarla, siente que tiene total libertad para inventársela. Y es entonces cuando Alice se cruza con Mizuko Himura, una misteriosa escritora japonesa que exhibe su vida como forma de arte en Instagram y que Alice siente –al menos desde el iPhone– como suya. Después de una prolongada persecución a través de las redes sociales, Alice y Mizuko se cruzan por fin en lo que parece un encuentro casual.

Una vida que no es mía

Als die 23-jährige Alice online auf die junge Schriftstellerin Mizuko stößt, fallen ihr in deren Lebenslauf merkwürdige Parallelen zu ihrem eigenen auf. Alice ist gebannt: Von ihrem Adoptivvater, einem Physiker, weiß sie, dass jedes Partikel ein »sympathisches« Gegenpartikel besitzt, das es auf ewig anzieht. Doch als sich Mizuko und Alice immer näherkommen, wird klar: Zwischen der Person, die wir sind, und der Person, die wir online zu sein vorgeben, tut sich oftmals eine gefährliche Kluft auf. Olivia Sudjic ist ein erstaunliches Debüt über zwei ambivalente Frauen und die Kräfte, die sie aufeinander ausüben, gelungen. Eine spannende und verästelte Geschichte, die in die Welt der Teilchenphysik eintaucht und sich mit der Vergangenheit Japans verwebt, um die Frage nach Identität und Liebe im digitalen Zeitalter zu beantworten.

Olivia Sudjic

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