My
first novel, furtl, was a 2014 Kirkus Reviews book
of the year selection. The absurd near future of that book became not-so-absurd
one year later – a
xenophobic reality show president rose to power by exploiting social networks
and sowing division. OOF: An Online Outrage Fiesta for the Ages was released in
mid-2021. Not a sequel. But it does seek to provide similar catharsis for
readers who can’t seem to shake their belief that It. Can. Always. Get.
Stupider.
Award-winning
novelist and cultural critic Strobe Witherspoon interrogates his own
profession. It goes terribly. Strobe
Witherspoon just sold his latest…
The standard bearer of idiotic journeys. This eighteenth-century
funhouse mirror displays the underbelly of the human condition from many absurd
angles, including but not limited to xenophobic violence, intellectual hubris,
and false idol worship.
'Thus, gentle Reader, I have given thee a faithful History of my Travels for Sixteen Years, and above Seven Months; wherein I have not been so studious of Ornament as of Truth.'
In these words Gulliver represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just set down; but how far can we rely on a narrator whose identity is elusive and whoses inventiveness is self-evident? Gulliver's Travels purports to be a travel book, and describes Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. A consummately skilful…
War brings out the dumb in all of us. This book hits home for anyone that’s horrified by the alteration and weaponization of the English language from those holding power. The high-stakes bureaucratic incompetence and illogical war-time decision-making birthed its own special kind of paradox – the Catch-22 – that unfortunately never goes out of fashion.
Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage.
Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the…
This climate fiction novel follows four generations of women and their battles against a global giant that controls and manipulates Earth’s water. Told mostly through a diary and drawing on scientific observation and personal reflection, Lynna’s story unfolds incrementally, like climate change itself. Her gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto…
I use the word absurd a lot. Never has its usage been more appropriate
than for this book. A [absurd] sendup of science fiction convention filled
with [absurd] characters doing [absurd] things all across multiple [absurd]
universes that somehow all makes sense in the end, particularly since none of
it makes any sense. It’s, you guessed it, ridiculous.
This box set contains all five parts of the' trilogy of five' so you can listen to the complete tales of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android! Travel through space, time and parallel universes with the only guide you'll ever need, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Read by Stephen Fry, actor, director, author and popular audiobook reader, and Martin Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well known as Tim in The Office.
The set also includes a bonus DVD Life, the Universe and…
The Sellout is a satirical treatise on the lengths humans will go to reject, deny, or literally erase, injustice. It skewers any pretense of a post-racial America, telling the story of a small town in California that brings back segregation and slavery. The outlandish uproar that ensues reveals the deep division that persists in America and the discomfort in addressing it.
'Outrageous, hilarious and profound.' Simon Schama, Financial Times
'The longer you stare at Beatty's pages, the smarter you'll get.' Guardian
'The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I've read.' New York Times
A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game.
Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged…
Dolça Llull Prat, a wealthy Barcelona woman, is only 15 when she falls in love with an impoverished poet-solder. Theirs is a forbidden relationship, one that overcomes many obstacles until the fledgling writer renders her as the lowly Dulcinea in his bestseller.
Intellectuals are dumb. Particularly when they are navigating their own
insecurity and ambition. Told through a series of ill-advised and awkwardly personal
letters to various scholastic and literary entities, this book shines a comic
light on the world of petty, festering academic grievance.
Finally a novel that puts the "pissed" back into "epistolary."
Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the midwest. His department is facing draconian cuts and squalid quarters, while one floor above them the Economics Department is getting lavishly remodeled offices. His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels. His star (he thinks) student can't catch a break with his brilliant (he…
Award-winning
novelist and cultural critic Strobe Witherspoon interrogates his own
profession. It goes terribly. Strobe
Witherspoon just sold his latest satirical novel for a lot of money. The book
in question, FLOTUS: A Memoir, is a fictitious autobiography about
a former first lady of the United States reflecting on years of misery at the
hands of her much older POTUS husband. When a chapter is leaked in advance of
the book's publication, an Online Outrage Fiesta (OOF) ensues via news outlets,
blogs, Twitter, troll farms, and everything in between. Witherspoon has his
life placed under a microscope. Family secrets are exposed. Now, an anthology
has been put together to document Witherspoon’s downfall—and settle the score.
OOF explores the
role of satire in a society lurching from one ridiculous crisis to the next,
where media outlets rely on clicks to stay alive and everything is filtered
through a lens of anger and misinformation.
Disgraced British anthropologist Nigel Rowe hopes his YouTube adventure channel will be just the treat to redeem him, but vengeful treasure hunters have other plans! Seeking a legendary Jesuit mission in Baja, Nigel saves his producer’s life when the man takes a bullet meant for him.
Lena thinks she knows her future: in her small village, nothing much has changed for two hundred years. Women farm and fish, plant and harvest: a cooperative, productive, peaceful life. Until the day a soldier rides in, to ask the unthinkable of the women: learn to fight. Invasion is imminent,…
