Description
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 Lethem
Full of clever postmodern flourishes, self-referential winks and riotous set pieces. It s funny, smart and beautifully written Alex Preston, The 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 Desperation
I first heard about Solomon Wiese on a bright, blustery day on the South Bank...
Later that evening, at the bar of the Travelodge near Waterloo Bridge, our unnamed narrator will encounter that very same Solomon Wiese.
In a conversation that lasts until morning, he will hear Solomon Wiese s story of his spectacular fall from grace.
A story about a scandal that has shaken the literary world and an accusation of serial plagiarism.
A story about childhood encounters with nothingness and a friend s descent into psychosis; about conspiracies and poetry cults; about a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost and the death of an old poet.
A story about a retreat to the East Anglian countryside and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits and faked social media accounts - plans in which our unnamed narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated...
A story that will take the entire night - and the remainder of the novel - to tell.
Reading Dead Souls feels like discovering the British Bolano, and not just for the gleeful dismantling of the cultural ego: the restless, searching sensibility; the precise tuning-in to contradictory voices. I haven t been so excited by a debut novel in a long time Luke Kennard, author of The Transition
Elegant, ambitious, very serious and very funny Katharine Kilalea, author of OK, Mr. Field
Sublime, legendary, delightfully unhinged. A rare and brilliant pleasure Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums
About the Author
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 KARDASHIAN S 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.
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