The Adjudicator

“In The Adjudicator, Susan Daitch delivers an intricately layered dystopia that reveals the havoc wreaked by genetic engineering and the pervasive reach of corporate power. With razor-edged prose, fierce intelligence, and humor she crafts a noir-infused tale of desperation and control, pushing the boundaries of the novel’s form through multimedia elements to create an experience as thought-provoking as it is gripping.”

—Ross Benjamin, translator of The Diaries of Franz Kafka

"How can something so smart, so ethically engaging, so subversive and sane, also be fun? Susan Daitch has made it happen, with wit and verve and empathy. Empathy is, at least partly, what The Adjudicator is about. Its narrator, sharing the DNA of a film noir gumshoe, searches for clues in a futuristic dystopia, a place where morality is up for grabs, where perfect control is a hair’s breadth from chaos, a world both imaginary, and eerily reminiscent of our own." 

 —John Haskell, author of The Complete Ballet

"A bad trip journey through the tangled knot history of technology, art, and capitalism through the form of a sci-fi mystery page turner. Daitch’s kaleidoscopic range is only bested by her stunning accomplishment—it burns in a million ways."

—Sammy Harkham, author of Everything Together

"Who are we when we become made-to-order? And do they take returns? Profound questions of self and consciousness are sewn into a propulsive spycraft plot set within a Byzantine surveillance state populated by designer babies. Susan Daitch expertly superimposes biotech, grim office politics, and literalized empathy to construct her Pynchonesque scenes. A mirror-dream to get lost in."

—Eugene Lim, author of Search History

"If the sentences comprising the text of this wonderful illustrated novel were to be disentangled, like a strand of DNA, they would stretch from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to Brighton Beach.”

—Ben Katchor, author of  The Dairy Restaurant

PRAISE FOR THE BOOKS OF SUSAN DAITCH

 “…like Roberto Bolaño’s gothic “2666.” Yet for all its latent darkness, Siege of Comedians is inquisitive … exhibiting a boundless curiosity in its characters’ unusual professions, a delight in the uncanny ways that history connects and repeats itself and a quixotic sense of hope that whatever has been lost to time might, one day, be found and restored.” 

—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

Best Books of 2021, Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"With shades of Umberto Eco and Paul Auster, this brilliant, addictive adventure novel is about the search for a mythical lost city located somewhere in modern-day Iran. As a succession of explorers and shady characters dig deeper into the landscape, the ancient secret of Suolucidir is gradually revealed. This is brainy, escapist fiction at its best."

—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"The author's prose is rich with winking allusions and sendups of modern tomb-raiding tropes, down to an explorer with 'a long stiff braid down her back.'"

—The New Yorker

“Daitch’s ebullient latest (after The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir) uses genre conventions as a jumping-off point for offbeat explorations in three interlocking novellas. Throughout, Daitch finds stimulating connections and writes with sharp irony and joy. This offers delights on every page.”

—Publishers Weekly

" . . . cerebral, satirical, and entertaining archaeological thriller . . . this richly crafted and handsomely written novel rewards rereading."

—David Cooper, New York Journal of Books

"In The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir, history is revealed as ghost and prankster, archaeological remnant, information feed. This search for a vanished city takes in rare book rooms and obituaries, travel records, borders drawn and redrawn by war, boxes of records from a sanatorium where Kafka stayed, a statuette of Disney's Aladdin, and quotes from Ignatz Mouse and Samuel Johnson. Where is the city? Where are we? We are lost, and will one day be someone else's Suolucidir, at best. In the meantime, Daitch's latest is a beguiling and virtuoso companion to our inevitable end: a novel that wrenches, sentence by fine sentence, some order from the chaos, while never shortchanging the chaos itself."

—Mark Doten, author of The Infernal

"Susan Daitch has written a literary barnburner of epic proportions. The question buried at the core of The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is one of empirical—or is the imperial?—knowledge itself. Her labyrinthine tale of archeological derring-do calls to mind both 1984 and 2666, and does so by looking backward in time as well as forward. It is also utterly original, the work of a visionary writer with an artistic sensibility all her own."

—Andrew Ervin, author of Burning Down George Orwell's House

"Susan Daitch's The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir is a daring undertaking, the creation of an ancient land of fantastic proportions, its borders touching other countries we think we know while still remaining elusive and mysterious. This is a novel of archeology and history, of mythology and empire, powered by an undeniable call to adventure and a deep yearning for understanding, written by a novelist who manages to surprise on nearly every page."

—Matt Bell, author of Scrapper