In a raucous debut that summons up Britain's fabled Goon Squad comedies, writer and philosopher Lars Iyer tells the story of someone very like himself with a "slightly more successful" friend and their journeys in search of more palatable literary conferences and better gin. One reason for their journeys: the narrator's home is slowly being taken over by a fungus that no one seems to know what to do about.Before it completely swallows his house, the narrator feels compelled to solv...

The writer Hari Kunzru says “made me feel better about the Apocalypse than I have in ages” is back—with a hilarious coming-of-age love storyThe unruly undergraduates at Cambridge have a nickname for their new lecturer: Wittgenstein Jr. He’s a melancholic, tormented genius who seems determined to make them grasp the very essence of philosophical thought.But Peters—a working-class student surprised to find himself among the elite—soon discovers that there’s n...

**"Memorable characters make this a singular exploration of the human condition." - Publishers WeeklyA scathingly funny look at a group of quirky graduate students majoring in Disaster Studies who are forced to reconsider their cynicism when they confront a new student who, remarkably, has the same name as the 20th Century Catholic mystic philosopher Simone Weil ...**My Weil follows a group of twenty-something PhD students of the new-fangled subject Disast...

In a work of blistering dark hilarity, a young Nietzsche experiences life in a metal band & the tribulations of finals season in a modern secondary schoolWhen a new student transfers in from a posh private school, he falls in with a group of like-minded suburban stoners, artists, and outcasts—too smart and creative for their own good. His classmates nickname their new friend Nietzsche (for his braininess and bleak outlook on life), and decide he must be the front m...

A plague of rats, the end of philosophy, the cosmic chicken, and bars that don’t serve Plymouth Gin—is this the Apocalypse or is it just America?“The apocalypse is imminent,” thinks W. He has devoted his life to philosophy, but he is about to be cast out from his beloved university. His friend Lars is no help at all—he’s too busy fighting an infestation of rats in his flat. A drunken lecture tour through the American South proves to be another colossal mistake. In ...

A wickedly funny and satisfyingly highbrow black comedy about the collapse of Western academic institutions under the weight of neoliberal economics and crushing, widespread idiocy.Lars and W., the two preposterous philosophical anti-heroes of Spurious and Dogma—called “Uproarious” by the New York Times Book Review—return and face a political, intellectual, and economic landscape in a state of total ruination.With philosophy professors bei...

A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall is an exuberant literary debut--a novel of real ideas and a playful examination of our in-between world, one that explores the nature of family, identity, art, and belief while also marking the introduction of an original new voice in contemporary fiction.Owen Burr is the six-foot-eight, Olympics-bound senior captain of the Stanford University water polo team. In his final collegiate match, however, he suffers a catastrophic injury that destr...

From the celebrated author of The Curfew (“A spare masterwork of dystopian fiction” —The New York Times Book Review), Jesse Ball’s Silence Once Begun is an astonishing novel of unjust conviction, lost love, and a journalist’s obsession.Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as the “Narito Disappearances,” the crime has authorities baffled—until a co...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • From the acclaimed author of Weather comes a slim, stunning portrait of a marriage—a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.“A startling feat of storytelling . . . Each line a dazzling, perfectly chiseled arrowhead aimed at your heart.” —Vanity Fair...

When Miles Franklin-shortlisted novelist Brenda walker became sick she turned to two healers: doctors and books.This is the story of how she recovered.Packing her bag for hospital after being diagnosed with breast cancer, Brenda wondered which book to put in. As a novelist and professor of literature, her life was built around reading and writing. Books had always been her solace and sustenance, and now choosing the right one was the most important thing sh...

What’s the key to the art of growing older well? Is it an art that anyone can cultivate? How should we confront dying and death in a secular age? What about sex when we’re older? What about loneliness? (And, for that matter, what about facelifts?)At the height of his powers in this remarkable (and often witty) book, Robert Dessaix addresses these increasingly urgent questions in inimitable prose and comes up with some surprising answers. From Java to Hobart via Berlin, Des...

Musings from a truly original thinker on eveything under the sun and many things over the moon.There are few aspects of existence to which Michael Leunig has not turned his renaissance mind, as a bemused and committed member of the human plight. From his cartoonist's sensibilities comes a peculiar journalism made of parable, memoir and soliloquy, on subjects ranging from the sublime to the subhuman.From the fragile ecosystem of the spirit to the brutalisation of th...