White

Description

Bret Easton Ellis has wrestled with the double-edged sword of fame and notoriety for more than thirty years now, since Less Than Zero catapulted him into the limelight in 1985, earning him devoted fans and, perhaps, even fiercer enemies. An enigmatic figure who has always gone against the grain and refused categorization, he captured the depravity of the eighties with one of contemporary literature's most polarizing characters, American Psycho's iconic, terrifying Patrick Bateman, and received plentiful death threats in the bargain. In recent years, his candor and gallows humor on both Twitter and his podcast have continued his legacy as someone determined to speak the truth, however painful it might be, and whom people accordingly either love or love to hate. He encounters various positions and voices controversial opinions, more often than not fighting the status quo. Now, in White, with the same originality displayed in his fiction, Ellis pours himself out onto the page and, in doing so, eviscerates the perceived good that the social-media age has wrought, starting with the dangerous cult of likeability. White is both a denunciation of censorship, particularly the self-inflicted sort committed in hopes of being 'accepted', and a bracing view of a life devoted to authenticity.

Bret Easton Ellis is the author of six novels, Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction, American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park and most recently Imperial Bedrooms, which was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, and a collection of stories, The Informers. His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Los Angeles.

If Joan Didion is the California ice queen who picked apart the increasingly threadbare fabric of 70s American society, then, with his forthcoming White, Bret Easton Ellis is her heir apparent. * Vanity Fair *