Dead Souls by Sam Riviere Paperback Book

Description: Dead Souls by Sam Riviere An extraordinary debut novel from an award-winning poet, about poets, plagiarism, love, technology, feuds and affairs, cancellation and revenge, and how writing really does alter reality FORMAT Paperback CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description I absolutely adored Dead Souls. Reading it felt like overhearing the most exhilarating, funny, mean conversation imaginable - which is to say it made me extremely happy and I dreaded it ending Megan NolanBeautiful, intricately humane, and gut-wrenchingly funny . . . I havent been so excited by a debut novel in a long time Luke KennardOne of the wittiest, sharpest, cruellest critiques of literary culture Ive ever read IndependentWhip-smart. Maddening. Weirdly hypnotic. I loved it Telegraph100 pages in, I was thinking, "Why bother with anything else? Why bother with lunch?" GuardianAt the Travelodge bar near Waterloo bridge, the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls meets the disgraced poet Solomon Wiese, and hears the story of his spectacular fall from grace - a story that will take the entire night to tell. Wieses story involves a plagiarism scandal, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, a retreat to the East Anglian countryside, and his plans for a triumphant return to the capital - plans in which our unnamed narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated ... Author Biography Sam Riviere is the author of the poetry books 81 AUSTERITIES (Faber & Faber, 2012), for which he won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and KIM KARDASHIANS MARRIAGE (Faber & Faber, 2015), as well as numerous limited-edition titles. Born in Norwich, he currently lives in Edinburgh, where he runs the micropublisher If a Leaf Falls Press. Review Mordant, torrential, incantatory, Bolano-esque, Perec-ian, and just so explosively written that I had to stop and shake the language-shrapnel from my hair and wipe it off my eyeglasses so I could keep reading. -- Jonathan LethemFull of clever postmodern flourishes, self-referential winks and riotous set pieces. Its funny, smart and beautifully written. -- Alex Preston * Guardian *I absolutely adored Dead Souls. Reading it felt like overhearing the most exhilarating, funny, mean conversation imaginable - which is to say it made me extremely happy and I dreaded it ending -- Megan Nolan, author of ACTS OF DESPERATIONSublime, legendary, delightfully unhinged. Sam Rivieres Dead Souls is a rare and brilliant pleasure, a coiling, searing fugue of a book that takes our deranged culture and pulls forth from it a box of stars -- Nicolette Polek, author of IMAGINARY MUSEUMSDead Souls is the literary equivalent of a 100% cocoa bar: intimidating, bitter, rich, and ultimately the only one worth your time. The novel seduces through relentlessly nested narratives, endlessly psychologically refracted. I have no idea quite how Rivière makes such an undertaking a compulsive and delightful page-turner - I wish I did, because Id steal it. Something oracular and terrifying lurks just below the surface of the pitch-perfect digressions and character assassinations, like uncovering the evidence for a long-dismissed paranoia and finding yourself an unwitting instigator of the conspiracy. But its also beautiful, intricately humane, and gut-wrenchingly funny; not so much cynical as a ruthless vivisection of cynicism itself... Reading it feels like discovering the British Bolaño, and not just for the gleeful dismantling of the cultural ego: the restless, searching sensibility; the precise tuning-in to contradictory voices. I havent been so excited by a debut novel in a long time -- Luke Kennard, author of THE TRANSITIONAs Brontë does so disarmingly in Wuthering Heights and Nabokov in Pale Fire, Sam Riviere gives a loquacious and pleasingly unreliable nobody the task of telling the tale of Dead Souls true protagonist: Solomon Weise, a recently excommunicated poet who seems to have been everywhere and known everyone. In long, sure sentences reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard, Riviere cracks open the administrative heart of the contemporary literary endeavor, finding it full not of hot air but of crowds of characters, a whole shimmering historical ecosystem-in short, the world as we know it, as mesmerizingly real as it is fictional. -- Lucy Ives, author of COSMOLOGY and LOUDERMILKDead Souls is elegant, ambitious, very serious and very funny - an enlivening burst of anti-anti-intellectualism. -- Katherine Kilalea, author of OK, MR. FIELDIf as I read Sam Rivieres wonderful first novel I discerned intriguing notes of Rachel Cusks Outline Trilogy and Thomas Bernhards propulsive monologues, I also found myself thinking with pleasure of the intricate (and hilarious) book-world satire in Italo Calvinos If on a Winters Night a Traveler. Echoes aside, Dead Souls is its own whip smart, razor sharp, wise-funny, highly readable animal and I cant recommend it enthusiastically enough. -- Laird Hunt, author of NeverhomeRiviere artfully blends metaphysics, existentialism, ideas of originality, and plagiarism, plus an enticing dose of history and memoir in this captivating read. * Readers Digest, A Best Fiction Book of the Year *Rivieres provocative debut novel ... Calls to mind Thomas Bernhard not only for its form but its rhythm and cadence * Publishers Weekly *A mesmeric (and often mordantly funny) read. Fans of the great Austrian curmudgeon Thomas Bernhard will recognise the style. I also thought of other modern masters who capture the cataract of consciousness in serpentine syntax: László Krasznahorkai; Javier Marías; even WG Sebald. And, of course, this shaggy-dog story about the delusions and misadventures of obscure, self-mythologising poets cannot help but evoke the Roberto Bolaño of The Savage Detectives ... The sheer brio and tumbling intelligence of Rivieres narration lift almost every page. Once you catch the spuming surf of his prose youll want to ride the wave to the shore. Hes wickedly sharp about the pious deceits, and self-deceptions, that fuel the culture industry like oil -- Boyd Tonkin * The Arts Desk *One of the wittiest, sharpest, cruellest critiques of literary culture Ive ever read. No summary can convey the hypnotic effect of Rivieres relentless prose. An astute, wildly original novel that talks trash about everyone whose success galls you. And theres nothing quite so delicious as that * Independent *Whip-smart. Maddening. Weirdly hypnotic. I loved it * Telegraph *Entirely original ... I laughed loud and often at the authors exuberance * Financial Times *100 pages in, I was thinking, "Why bother with anything else? Why bother with lunch?" This is a brilliant and brilliantly entertaining novel. The writing is merciless; the rage is genuine. The cumulative effect is exhilarating: Riviere has turned paranoid pub talk and midnight doubts into a prose poem of laceration * Guardian *A boozy, raging, hilarious and surreal recounting that keeps you enraptured * AnOther Magazine *With sinuous, ornate prose and riotous set pieces, its funny, smart and beautifully written * Observer *John Cheever wrote, one never asks is it a novel? One asks is it interesting, and Dead Souls is definitely interesting ... Funny, smart ... with less vinegar and vitriol than Bernhard, more wryness and lashings of irony * Spectator *Intoxicating ... Stepping through Dead Souls funhouse mirror, we see the current normal reality is as absurd and empty as an email. Yet, running through the novel is a skein of hope * The i *Very funny * Sunday Times *Imagine Thomas Bernhard without the moral seriousness ... This a clever, funny book, an atheistic cousin to The Third Policeman * TLS *Very, very funny. A comedy of immense depth. Wildly original * Sunday Times * Long Description I absolutely adored Dead Souls . Reading it felt like overhearing the most exhilarating, funny, mean conversation imaginable - which is to say it made me extremely happy and I dreaded it ending Megan Nolan Beautiful, intricately humane, and gut-wrenchingly funny . . . I havent been so excited by a debut novel in a long time Luke Kennard One of the wittiest, sharpest, cruellest critiques of literary culture Ive ever read Independent Whip-smart. Maddening. Weirdly hypnotic. I loved it Telegraph 100 pages in, I was thinking, "Why bother with anything else? Why bother with lunch?" Guardian At the Travelodge bar near Waterloo bridge, the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls meets the disgraced poet Solomon Wiese, and hears the story of his spectacular fall from grace - a story that will take the entire night to tell.Wieses story involves a plagiarism scandal, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, a retreat to the East Anglian countryside, and his plans for a triumphant return to the capital - plans in which our unnamed narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated ... Review Quote Sublime, legendary, delightfully unhinged. Sam Rivieres Dead Souls is a rare and brilliant pleasure, a coiling, searing fugue of a book that takes our deranged culture and pulls forth from it a box of stars Promotional "Headline" An extraordinary debut novel from an award-winning poet, about poets, plagiarism, love, technology, feuds and affairs, cancellation and revenge, and how writing really does alter reality Details ISBN1474617662 Author Sam Riviere Pages 320 Publisher Orion Publishing Co Year 2022 ISBN-10 1474617662 ISBN-13 9781474617666 Format Paperback Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom Publication Date 2022-03-03 UK Release Date 2022-03-03 Series W&N Essentials DEWEY 823.92 Audience General NZ Release Date 2022-06-13 AU Release Date 2022-06-13 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! 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