Taipei
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Canongate Books
Published:4th Jul '13
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From one of this generation's most talked about young writers comes a novel about failed relationships, drug-induced depression, marriage, and death
At some point, maybe twenty minutes after he'd begun refreshing Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Gmail in a continuous cycle - with an ongoing, affectless, humorless realisation that his day 'was over' - he noticed with confusion, having thought it was early morning, that it was 4:46PM
Taipei is an ode - or lament - to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas.
From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.
The most interesting prose stylist of his generation -- Bret Easton Ellis
Lin's writing is reminiscent of early Douglas Coupland, or early Bret Easton Ellis, but there is also something going on here that is more profoundly peculiar, even Beckettian . . . deliciously odd * * Guardian * *
Moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious -- Miranda July, author of No One Belongs Here More Than You
Lin is a 21st century literary adventurer . . . [Taipei] is a fascinating book, bone dry, repellant, painful, but relentlessly true to life -- Frederick Barthelme, author of Waveland
A Kafka for the iPhone generation . . . Tao Lin may well be the most important writer under thirty working today -- Clancy Martin
[A] deadpan literary trickster
* * New York Times * *Alienation, obsession, social confusion, drugs, the internet, sex, food, death - [are] rendered here with a calm intuition . . . a work of vision so relentless it forces most any reader to respond -- Blake Butler, author of Sky Saw
Astrange, hypnotic, memoir-reeking novel that is equal parts dissociative and heartbreaking, surreally hallucinogenic and grittily realist, ugly and beautiful -- Porochista Khakpour, author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects
Deeply smart, funny, and heads-over-heels dedicated * * New York Magazine * *
Lin captures certain qualities of contemporary life better than many writers in part because he dispenses with so much that is expected of current fiction * * London Review of Books * *
ISBN: 9781782111856
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 16mm
Weight: 174g
256 pages
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