Something New Under the Sun

Description

'An urgent novel about our very near future, and a deeply addictive pleasure' Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies 'Magnificent and stunning' Jeff VanderMeer, author of Hummingbird Salamander 'An immense achievement. Masterful and merciless' Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road A bold, addictive and urgent new novel about capitalism, environmental collapse and our near future. What is really going on? Patrick Hamlin has come to Hollywood to see his novel be adapted for the screen, but why does he get the feeling that the film project is a smokescreen for something else? Does Cassidy Carter, the troubled starlet due to play the lead, know something he doesn't? And what is the truth about WAT-R, the synthetic water everyone drinks in LA? Sharply funny, alluring and devastating, Something New Under the Sun is an unmissable novel for our present moment. 'Sun-drenched, sharply observed and swift-moving... strange and new' Guardian 'Profoundly affecting - somehow both funny and deeply unsettling' Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind 'Expertly conjures California noir filtered through the ambient and not-so-ambient apocalypse' Emma Cline, author of The Girls A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR * A LIT HUB BEST BOOK OF 2021

Alexandra Kleeman is a Staten Island-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, and the winner of the 2016 Bard Fiction Prize. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others. Nonfiction essays and reportage have appeared in Harper's, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. Her work has received scholarships and grants from Bread Loaf, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and ArtFarm Nebraska. She is the author of the debut novel You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine (Harper, 2015) and Intimations (Harper, 2016), a short story collection.

'Alexandra Kleeman expertly conjures California noir filtered through the ambient and not-so-ambient apocalypse' Emma Cline, author of The Girls 'Written with tremendous verve and flair, Something New Under the Sun is both an urgent novel about our very near future and a deeply addictive pleasure. Constantly surprising and endlessly inventive, every page is saturated with wit, intelligence, and extraordinary prose. Kleeman is a phenomenon, one of the most brilliant and gifted writers at work today' Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation 'With this novel, Alexandra Kleeman confirms her place as one of the major writers of her generation. Reading it is like looking at a familiar room through warped glass: What you perceive is distorted and unsettling while remaining curiously beautiful' Esme Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias 'A richly rendered ecological novel, characterized not only by how it sets the landscape but also by the fact that the landscape is quite often allowed to run the show. Kleeman is phenomenal when it comes to place writing. Like many of the characters in her book, I got lost inside her scene-setting, arid and wild, happy to let her drive me wherever her genius brain thought we should go. This is a book I'll be thinking about for years to come' Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth 'An immense achievement. A masterful and merciless skewering of our times, rendered with such grace I couldn't put it down' Olivia Sudjic, author of Asylum Road '...Kleeman is a writer working with far more flair than most. Her novels critique the comfortable indifference of life under late capitalism and, as such, are quite the opposite: observant, unnerving and bold' i Newspaper 'Profoundly affecting -somehow both funny and deeply unsettling' Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind